


Coming Home

by Sonora



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:06:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/434870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When S.H.I.E.L.D. approaches Tony Stark to help with their 1940s deception for Steve Rogers, to be a semi-familiar face and name to help re-introduce him to the world, Tony agrees on one condition - that it's his show to run.  And at first, it seems like his plan's going off without a hitch.  What he doesn't account for, however, are his own growing feelings for Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

Tony throws the briefing packet back on the table in front of Fury, feeling more than a little ill at having read what’s in there. He focuses his eyes back down on the bustle of the helicarrier’s bridge, at where Colonel Hill is pretending like she’s not listening to everything that’s being said.

“No,” he says. Short and succinct. Ought to properly communicate his distaste with this bullshit. “Wait, fuck no.”

The director of S.H.I.E.L.D. just shakes his head in that exasperated way of his. “Tony, please try to understand...”

“What is confusing about the word no?” he demands, crossing his arms, and shoves back a bit. “What could possibly be not clear about me not wanting, no, not doing this.” He looks over at Coulson, who’s huddled up in a miserable-looking ball against a far bulkhead. “What do you think about it, Agent Coulson? Think this is a good idea? Cause I kinda think you don’t.”

The agent doesn’t say anything, and Fury steps back in, wrapping the table to get his attention.

“We don’t have a choice, Tony. The world, it’s changed too much. If he panics, we’ve got no chance of keeping him...”

“Caged up?” Tony offers.

“Safe,” Fury supplies, and sighs. “Look, Tony, this is the plan, and we’re goin’ ahead with it, whether you’re on board or not. We can always find somebody else to play...”

“My imaginary relative?” he snaps, and stands up, pacing away, trying to think. Shit, he does not want to do this. It’s bad enough that S.H.I.E.L.D. found Steve Rogers, Captain fucking America, barely alive, in a coma in some ice field in Greenland. God only knows what they’re going to use some old-timer patriot for once they get him thawed out and working again. Maybe that ridiculous Avengers Initiative thing. Who knows?

But this, wanting to keep Rogers in some Forties fantasy world, have Tony himself go in there and perpetuate the story, in order to... to what? Torture him by putting him in a position of playing nice with dad’s best experiment ever? Dad’s golden boy, the one who could do no wrong, who was always better than him? He can’t exactly say that, though.

“You really think that’s going to make him more comfortable?” he asks instead. “My dad was not exactly a people person.”

“Steve Rogers liked Howard, worked closely with him, from what I understand from... research,” Coulson says quietly from his post. “More importantly, he trusted him. We obviously can’t get your father, Tony...”

He rolls his eyes. “Of course not, seeing as he’s dead...”

“...but we can give him a member of the Stark family. That’s not a lie, if it’s you. He could use you, Tony, when he wakes up. I’ll be running this personally. We’re not going to screw you over.”

Tony rubs the surface of his arc reactor through his t-shirt, looking at them both, considering. He hates all this S.H.I.E.L.D. business, all this super-spy bullshit. He liked it way, way better when the only people he had to deal with were the CIA. At least they’re honest about being manipulative bastards...

“Fine,” he says, and goes back for the briefing packet, opening to the page that describes their entirely stupid little set. He holds it up. “But this is not going to fly. You want me to introduce him to the modern world slowly, fine. I choose the location. It’s mine. You got that?”

He’s well aware of half the bridge crew watching him, Hill leaning forward on one of those railings, her eyes on Fury, Fury staring up at the ceiling, like he’s praying for patience.

“Fine,” he finally says. “You get your input, Stark. But this op still belongs to me.” And he looks at him. “And you’re shaving off that damn goatee. Can’t think of how we’d possibly explain that to the man.”

Fat chance, Tony thinks to himself, but goes back to studying the packet. Hmm. There’s a Stark facility in upstate New York, one of his Walter Reed collaboration programs. It’s old, unrenovated in a lot of respects, and with a little work, might be just the thing...

He may not give a shit about Steve Rogers, not really, but problems, problems are always interesting.

+++++

The air smells like fresh-cut grass and sunshine, drifting in through an open window. It’s the first thing Steve notices, that smell. He hasn’t smelled that in all the long months he’s been in Europe, in the gray mud of the war.

So where is he? England? Back in America? He can’t remember. What happened, how he got here. And everything’s too bright, too clean, for him to get a purchase on any of it...

“Captain Rogers?” a man’s voice asks from a darker patch, opposite the window. “You awake?”

He turns towards it, every muscle in his body screaming at him in the kind of pain he hasn’t felt since the serum took hold. There are tubes in his arms that pull at him, preventing movement. And he must have groaned or cussed or something, because then there’s a hand on his shoulder, steadying him.

“Easy, captain,” that voice continues, and he’s being offered a glass of water now, being helped to sit up. “You’ve been asleep a long time. Your body’s going to need some time to adjust.”

“Asleep?” he gasps, that pain still sparking through him, but he sips at the water. It’s good. His throat’s bone-dry. “A long time? How long?”

“You crashed in the fall of 1943,” the man sitting next to his bed says. There’s something familiar about him, Steve thinks, familiar in the way he’s talking, maybe, or the sound of his voice. “It’s...”

“Just tell me, sir,” he interrupts, somewhat scared now, “Is the war over?”

“Yes,” the man says. “About... five years ago.”

“So it’s...”

“1950,” the man tells him softly, and pats his shoulder again as the enormity of that hits him. 1950. The whole war, the war he was supposed to win, gone, over without him even there to see it, to help...

“Where am I?”

“Upstate New York, a clinic funded through the Stark family for wounded veterans. You’ve been here since they salvaged your from the wreckage of that Nazi plane. You’re quite lucky you’re alive.”

He takes that in for a moment. And then a sudden, terrible thought grabs at Steve’s heart. “Did... did we win?”

“Yeah.” That’s shorter, clipped. “Of course.”

It doesn’t help Steve’s fear. “How?”

“Howard was working on several projects during the war, only one of which was the serum we used on you, Captain. One of the others... well, it was less surgical.”

“Surgical?” he asks, confused now. “What does that mean?”

He shifts some more, enough to get a good look at the man he’s talking to. An impeccable suit in a cut that Steve doesn’t quite know, but looks very fashionable. A hat on his knee. Dark hair, slicked back perfectly. A strangely shaved Van Dyke. And the set of his shoulders, his features...

 _Handsome_ , Steve thinks to himself, and then his traitorous mind flashes to Howard, and Bucky... and pushes it all away again. New York may have been a forgiving place, as long as a man stayed quiet and subtle, the Army may have chosen to look the other way, as long as he was out there killing Nazis, but the world can’t have changed that much while he was asleep.

Better not to even wonder about it right now.

“Hitler killed himself in ‘45 but Japan hadn’t surrendered yet. So we dropped Howard’s bomb on them. And then did it again. And then the war ended.”

Steve digests that for a moment. And nods. It’s a short synopsis of something terrible. He can sense that. Better not to press right now, though. He’s grateful, actually, that there isn’t more being offered. “What about my team? Peggy... Lieutenant Carter? Everyone make it through?”

“The world’s still turning,” the man says without answering his question, with another very slight pause, and smiles a little. “It’s good to see you’re back with us, Captain Rogers.” He stands and brushes down an invisible wrinkle in his suit, cradles his hat in hand like he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. “There’s a bell for the nurse’s station down the hall,” and he points at a sleek little button beside his bed. “I’ll be back tomorrow to check in on you, Captain. For right now, I’m going to go get your doctor.”

He nods. “Of course, Mister, umm... I didn’t catch your name.”

“Anthony Stark,” he says from the doorway.

And like that, he’s gone. Leaving only the disquiet of the room to sooth Steve’s racing mind.

Eight years. Dear god. Eight years.

+++++

Anthony Stark, the doctors tell him, is one of the board members here at the clinic.

“He runs the charity that finances the place,” the man tells him as a nurse takes his blood pressure. “He’s Howard Stark’s cousin.”

“And what does this place do?”

“We work with a range of medical issues specific to veterans. But it's mostly experimental research and development on prosthetics," the doctor replies automatically. He seems uncomfortable, like the clothes he’s wearing don’t quite fit right. “There’s been a big need for it over the last decade or so.”

“Yeah, sure, the war,” Steve nods, and lets the doctor finish his exam.

They say he seems to be in good health, but given the extremes of the environment in which they found him and his uniquely enhanced physiology, they’re going to at least wait until the bloodwork is back before considering releasing him.

 _Observation_ , he’s told.

He can handle that, he decides. A nice break from the front. Even though the front is long, long gone.

And Steve isn’t sure how he feels about that. As much as he hated the death, the killing, the horror of it all, the war, with its clarity of purpose and sense of meaning, was in some ways, the only thing he’s ever had in his life that mattered, the only place he’s ever been where he wasn’t a burden on those around him, what he, this body, was built for. And now, lacking that...

 _And your men_ , he tells himself, _and Peggy, and Howard..._

He presses Mr. Stark’s button, and asks the cute, red-headed Nurse Romanov who shows up if he can’t have a book or something.

Anything to take his mind off of... that.

He can’t do this to himself. Not right now. Not again.

Not over yet another Stark.

+++++

As they’re pulling up the drive of the clinic for day number two of this bullshit, Tony’s adjusting his tie a little, not liking the damn thing at all. The suit is perfect 1950s, one of several he had custom-tailored for this. It’s the details, he knows, that’ll get them killed on this little project.

He rubs the cover of his arc reactor beneath the cotton, and wonders if this is really all going to go to plan after all.

He’s using one of his own facilities, one of the ones run by Stark Industry’s Bring Them Home Foundation, the charity he’d established a few years ago after it had become clear that Walter Reed was doing a shit job of taking care of returning vets. This one happens to specialize in myoeletric prosthetics, a start-up that had required millions in investment and promised billions in returns - although Tony had been more thinking about it as his way of helping the people he’d put in harm’s way - so the potential for corporate espionage was high. So it’s located far, far away from the civilized world.

The way Tony sees it, Fury wants to keep Rogers under control, and Fury wants Rogers introduced into the modern world gradually. Tony can do both of those things just fine here.

 _It’s period-neutral, a converted old 1850s mansion, gorgeous place, private_ , he’d argued to Coulson, who’d put been in charge of working this on Fury’s behalf. _Good patient community, group of vets, Army guys, just like Steve. It’ll give him something to hold onto when we start changing things._

 _Don’t you think that’s a little risky, Mr. Stark?_ Coulson had asked him. _A real facility. You can’t control that many people..._

 _They’re soldiers,_ Tony had replied flatly. _Rogers isn’t going to believe that he’s in a real hospital unless he’s in a real hospital. Let’s give him a real hospital._

Coulson had chewed on the inside of his lip for a little while, and then nodded, and started going over the plan.

It’s simple. Start Rogers out in a world that’s slightly foreign, slightly more modern. One that contains the right ratio of technological progress to familiar design. From there, Tony plans on changing things gradually, introducing ideas and technology and behaviors into the clinic environment gradually.

Which means right now, he’s walking into pure 1950s America.

 _We will be sweeping your rooms over the next few days,_ Agent Coulson had told them. _Everything too modern will be confiscated or repurposed. Your clothing will be swapped out. You’ve all been given packets on what you are and aren’t allowed to talk about while Captain Rogers is anywhere in the facility. Family visits will only be allowed if they follow the same rules..._

Fortunately, while most civilians wouldn’t put up with that kind of treatment, most of these men and women are - or were - active duty military. Which means instead of being legitimately pissed that their DVDs players are being taken away, they spent an afternoon whining good-naturedly, and got on studying up on how instead of _Afghanistan_ it’s _Guadalcanal_ for the next few weeks. 

They actually seem excited about it once they learned it was for Captain America, carrying out every task they were assigned, and a few of the more senior officers and NCOs around offering their own ideas for what might need to be addressed. Little details, like Japanese tattoos and male nurses and female patients and slang terms, _what do you want us to do about the slang terms, Mr. Stark, should we whip up a guide for what the guys shouldn’t be saying_...

Their enthusiasm’s been cheering.

Which is nice, because Tony doesn’t have much of his own.

The planning may have been sort of fun. But yesterday, telling a man - a man who’s a living legend, the first superhero, the only person dad ever spoke about with any admiration at all - that his whole life is gone, without being able to tell him just how far gone it really is...

That wasn’t so great.

So Tony’s a little on edge as Hogan opens his door for him. His old friend’s gotten into it, too, completely enjoying the old-timey uniform that he’s been told he has to wear up for these visits, the car that was dug out of Tony's collection. He’s grinning.

“You look dapper, boss,” he says.

“You just like driving this car,” Tony replies, almost snapping, irritated he has to do this, and heads in.

 _Just keep it up_ , he thinks to himself as he makes his way up to Rogers’ room, _just a few weeks of this, and you’re done._

The blond captain’s pushed up in his pillows today when Tony comes in, clad in one of an annoyingly skin-tight uniform shirt, reading some Arthur C. Clark novel. Science fiction - a way of subtly introducing new ideas - was one of Tony’s ideas that Coulson signed off on, so the clinic library is stocked with the classics right now, and Romanov’s got orders to make sure that’s what Rogers gets when he asks for reading material. 

_This is fucking stupid_ , she’d stated when she’d finished reading the brief she’d been given. _I’m an assassin, not a fucking babysitter._

But Fury wanted her here, so here she is. Tony’s just happy she’s taking Coulson’s orders. Sort of. Because he really, really doesn't trust her. 

“How you feeling this morning, Captain Rogers?”

The big man lays the book aside and shakes a hand through his hair. Somebody but it back down to regulation when he was still in his coma. It’s a good look on him. “Fine, Mr. Stark.”

“That’s good,” Tony says, and sits down in the same chair from yesterday. “You were in that coma for years. You had us all very worried.”

“You’re on the board here, right?” 

That’s what the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors had been told to tell him. It’s close enough to the truth. Tony nods. “Yeah, that’s right. But I work in Manhattan.”

“You a weapons developer?”

“Like Howard? No. Not for me. I'm in finance.” 

Rogers looks away, out the window, and one of his hands grips at the blankets over his lap. _Interesting_ , Tony thinks. “Where is... I’d just thought that maybe, umm, Howard would... be here. Come see me.”

 _More interesting_ , Tony thinks. Why is it Howard, and not Peggy? From what he remembers of dad’s stories about this man, he was head-over-heels for that British officer. Dad always seemed a little pissed about that, actually, thinking about it... “Howard’s in Japan, helping MacArthur with the Occupation in Tokyo,” he says, and feels sort of bad about it. At least it’s only half a lie. It is was what Dad did after the war, after all.

“Japan?" That brow furrows. "I thought we... you said we bombed them. We were at war with them.”

“Strategic situation in Asia’s changed. We need Japan. We’re allies now," Tony says, short as he dares, light as he can. He does not want to get into communism and containment strategy and the Cold War right now. "Da... Howard’s making sure the reconstruction’s done right. You know him, never one to pass up a challenge like...”

But Rogers isn’t listening to him, and Tony stops talking.

“Sorry,” the soldier says. “I just wanted to tell him...” And he shakes his head, shoulders drooping a little now. “Maybe I could write him to say thank-you.”

“I can probably get a letter sent through diplomatic channels, if you’d like,” Tony offers. 

“Thanks,” and Rogers rubs his hands together, seems to come back to life. “Umm...Nurse Romanov said I was okay to walk around a bit, if you wanted to do something other than sit around in here.”

Tony nods, grimacing inwardly. He’s really not supposed to be up yet. They’d discussed that. Nothing outside the room for a few days. He hadn’t gotten his faux-1950s skins in yet for everybody’s prosthetics. So much custom fabrication had had to be done for this project, in such a short time frame, he still hadn’t gotten some of it in from California yet.

“Sure,” is all he says, though, faking indifference. They can go out the front instead of the back, where the track is, where anybody could be out doing a jogging test right now. “Do you a world of good.”

Stretching his feet tentatively down to the tile of the floor, Rogers winces, toes flexing up and away. Probably still really stiff, Tony realizes, and goes over to offer him a hand up.

“Thanks,” the soldier says, leaning on Tony a little as he slips onto his own two feet. He’s staggeringly heavy. He’s also nothing but muscle, everything clearly on display beneath a thin wrapper of cotton t-shirt and shorts...

 _Don’t even think about thinking about it_ , Tony admonishes himself, and holds him until he can get steady on his feet.

“Feels good to stand up,” he chuckles, smiling a little now. It’s the first time Tony’s seen him smile.

He tries not to let it distract him. “I’m sure it does.”

Rogers throws on a robe from the closet - Tony makes a mental note to get him some real clothes here in the near future - and together, they head outside.

“Sun feel good, Captain Rogers?” Tony asks, as they emerge from the shade of the old building, out into the sunshine of the spring day beyond.

“Feels very good, Mr. Stark,” Rogers nods back, and turns his face up to the blue sky above them.

 _He’s gorgeous_ , Tony thinks suddenly, taking that sight in, and tries to push it aside. Not to think it again for the rest of the day’s visit.

He almost succeeds.

+++++

It’s the fourth day after waking up that any of the other patients talk to Steve at all.

And then, when it happens at lunch in the hospital’s cafeteria, it’s the last person he would have expected.

“Mind if I sit here, sir?” 

Steve looks up to see a woman with short hair standing there at the chair across from his, a smile on her face and one of the strange trays they have here - Mr. Stark calls it _plastic_ , whatever that is - in her right hand. 

Her only hand. Her left is gone, up to the elbow.

Nodding, Steve stands up and goes to pull out the chair for her.

“Thanks,” the woman says as he holds it for her, flashing him that smile, easing herself in, clearly having to compensate for her missing hand. “The Army boys don’t always feel comfortable eating with me, and I’ve seen you over here by your lonesome the last few days...”

“It’s fine, ma’am,” he says, and looks around. People are staring. He feels his own cheeks flush a little, and goes back to his own seat. “From what I can tell, most of the men here are junior enlisted.”

“A few officers, too,” she replies, and goes for her mug of coffee. “Not too many of us, though. Sometimes I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

“You’re an officer?” he asks, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice. 

But she just laughs, and holds her hand out over their lunches of sandwiches and apples. “Major Martha Hutchinson, US Air Force, at your service, sir.”

“Captain Steve Rogers, Army,” he says, shaking back, and then realizes what was wrong with that last sentence of hers. “US... what’s the Air Force?”

“The Army Air Corps broke off, formed its own branch of the service back in ‘49,” she replies, a little hesitant now, picking at her pile of apple slices, and it doesn’t escape Steve’s notice that she doesn’t say _last year_.

He goes back to his own food, not saying anything. “And they let women be officers?”

“Hey, we served in World War II, too,” she says, even and easy, just like every other decent officer he’s ever met. “It’s only fair.”

He shakes his head. “And you lost your arm there?”

Her face darkens a bit. “Not there. I lost it in Iraq.” She laughs a little, mirthless. “Sixty-three combat sorties, live-fire ops. I’ve had wings shredded up so bad by triple-a that I could hardly get back to base. But what gets me? Four day pass from flying, they need an officer to go pull convoy duty up to Baghdad, and what happens? I get my arm blown off.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, not sure what else a man could say to that. Why are they out there, putting women in harm’s way like that? Steve hadn’t realized women had gotten injured so badly in the war. Most of them had been nurses, auxiliaries at best. But then he thinks about Peggy, and how fiercely she’d defended her right to be a soldier, to stand toe-to-toe with the rest, and it hurts. Especially since Stark won’t tell him what happened to her. He says he doesn’t know, but Steve is getting the feeling there’s a lot more to it than that. “That’s... that’s got to be hard.”

She shrugs, and starting cutting her sandwich - one-handed - into bite-sized pieces. “It’s okay, sir. Colonel Rhodes got me a spot here. They needed some female patients, physiological differences and all that, and I figured, sure I’ll get a Darth Vader hand if it means I can play with my kids again...” and then she cuts herself off, mid-sentence, switching subjects before Steve has a chance to ask about that... Darth Vader thing. “But anyway, sir, everybody really excited that you’re here. Thrilled, actually. You’re a legend.”

He catches Nurse Romanov - who’s somewhat of a terror, he’s discovering - staring daggers at him across the room, and coughs nervously. Something about her just freaks him out. “I’m just a boy from Brooklyn, ma’am.”

The major shakes her head, but doesn’t try to argue with him. Instead, she pops a bite of sandwich into her mouth, chewing slowly, and he goes back to his own lunch, and when they’re done, she asks him if he’d like to come by the third-floor common room tonight for the weekly poker game with the other officers.

“... we keep it low, ten dollar buy-in, but if you haven’t had a chance to go to the bank yet, sir, we could always just...”

But before Steve has a chance to ask in what version of reality ten dollars isn’t a lot of money, Nurse Romanov is right there. At his elbow. Frowning in that way she seems to like to frown.

At the major.

“I think Captain Rogers would be far more comfortable in his room tonight,” she says flatly. “We still aren’t sure what his condition is, exactly.”

Hutchinson gives the other woman a look that instantly wipes away any doubts Steve had about her being an officer. “I’m allowed to talk to him, bitch,” she says evenly. “Back off.”

Romanov just stalks away. The major winks at Steve, and goes back to her lunch. “So, Captain, come on, tell me a war story. I bet you’ve got some doozies.”

He doesn’t go to poker that night. Something about it... just doesn’t feel right. The conversation, trying to keep up with all the new things - a separate air service, women in harm’s way

Instead, he turns on the desk light in his little, comfortable room and sits there in the night breeze, tapping a fountain pen on the top sheet of the stationary Mr. Stark brought him this afternoon.

There are a dozen things he wants to say to Howard. A hundred. But none of the words will come, none of the ideas with coalesce.

How does a man encapsulate all that... without marking himself for what he is? Without ensuring Howard’s hatred?

Steve sighs and puts the pen back. Maybe he can write a letter tomorrow. He picks up a scrap of paper from the corner of the small desk instead. Howard’s cousin - the one who keeps coming by every day, even though he doesn’t have to - left him his telephone number today.

_Call this number anytime, day or night, if you need anything, Captain Rogers. It’s my personal line. If you don’t reach me, my man Jarvis will be there to pick up, and he can always reach me._

_Mr. Stark, I can’t just call you if..._

_I wouldn’t give it to you if I didn’t mean it, captain. Please._

He wants to call and ask about the women. About the war. If there’s something still going on they haven’t told him about. How much the world has changed in the few years he was asleep. Ask all those questions, the only question he’s got right now.

_What else haven’t I seen?_

He doesn’t call, though. He doesn’t want to know. Things are all still too raw for him, too new, even thought they happened years ago. He can’t recall any dreams from his coma. Nothing. It’s too much to try to get his head around the world right now, as it is, without torturing himself over the details of what he missed, what he wasn’t there to help with, to hear a history of battles he’s missed and friends who didn’t live to see the ticker tape parades and celebrate their victories.

 _Like Bucky_ , his mind whispers to him.

And suddenly, Steve’s not curious any more.

Steve goes down to the nurse’s station, asks Nurse Romanov, who’s reading some thin paperback novel by somebody, Ian Fleming, for a pencil. She hands one over without even looking at him.

The rubber in the eraser at the tip is better than he remembers it. He uses it all that night.

This paper’s not the best for sketching. But it makes him feel better, and that’s really what he needs right now.

+++++

Coulson, Tony knows, really doesn’t like this.

Somehow, that's making an unpleasant task a little more fun.

“So, Mr. Stark, does this mean we get our X-Box back?” one of the Army boys is saying. A couple of them insisted on helping out with getting the new TV set up. Tony’s rather proud of this one. An HD screen, latest and greatest, wrapped up in a 1960s style box. Complete with working dials. It’s got a remote too, because why the hell not, although it’s only got a few channels. Channels that JARVIS is going to program out and run for the next few weeks.

“No, but those vintage Playboys I promised you will be in tomorrow. I’ll give you first pick, if you want,” Tony says, and smirks at Widow as she comes in with a tray of coffees for everyone, and pills for the lieutenant, who’s currently smashed between TV box and wall, hooking up cables. “How you doin’, doll?” he asks her.

“Bite me, Stark. For the record, I hate this assignment, sir,” she snaps at Coulson and hands her boss a steaming mug, thrusting another at Tony. He has to jump back to avoid getting black, three sugars, all over him. “This was your idea, wasn’t it, Tony? Putting the ginger in a tight nurse’s outfit, sticking her in a place with a bunch of horny little boys...”

“We really do appreciate havin' a pretty woman around here, ma’am!” the lieutenant behind the tv yells, not at all serious. “Most of the nurses are fugly like you would not believe.”

“She can kill you in your sleep, you know,” Agent Coulson points out serenely.

“In like five different ways,” she confirms, and shakes the little paper cup with his medication in it. “So stop being a pig and come get your pills.”

The el-tee extracts himself carefully, the curving length of metal below his hip taking his weight well, and heads over. He's grinning.

Coulson isn’t.

“Do you really think this is wise, Mr. Stark? Putting a color TV in here, replacing the black and white so soon?”

Tony shrugs, and sips at his coffee, and thinks about how to answer that.

It’s been a week of this already. Of sitting and talking to Steve when he wakes up. Answering his questions. Talking to him more a little bit about the war, about the battles, about planes and tanks and what the world’s like now. In this slightly-adjusted future.

But for some reason, he just can’t bring himself to tell the captain about Peggy. Because she’s alive - old, almost 100, but alive - and there’s nothing about that that fits into the current narrative.

He doesn’t like lying about that, about a woman who, by all accounts, Rogers was in love with. It makes his skin crawl.

And there’s something about Rogers, too, that he's starting to like. A kind of calm, cool strength that Tony can admire. A quick, subtle mind. Solid. He’s solid. Like the guy out of the stories Dad used to tell, a man of few words...

_He was a hero, Tony. They don’t make men like that anymore._

But nostalgia for Dad’s bedtime stories aside, Tony knows that if Rogers wants to put some thought into it, he’ll be able to figure out what’s going on here. The man - surprisingly enough - is not an idiot. He’s not nearly on Tony’s level - not many people are - but he’s obviously got a good grasp on a lot of other things that Tony’s never been able to wrap his head around. Like the way the guys around here defer to him, the effortless way he’s earned their respect, legend or not. A leader, a real leader, the kind of man who makes others want to follow him...

But he doesn’t vocalize any of that. Not to Agent Coulson. It’ll probably go right back to Fury.

And he’s starting to feel a little protective of his soldier here.

“People spend what, ninety percent of their day looking at glowing rectangles?” Tony says instead, flippant, easy, like he doesn’t care about this at all. “Gotta get him used to it. This is about the most non-threatening way I can think of to introduce that to him.”

Coulson just shakes his head. “Mr. Stark...”

And then he stops.

Looks up, towards the door.

And there’s Rogers.

Sweaty. Very sweaty. His short blond hair spiked up, dark stains on his standard-issue PT shirt, the gray fabric clinging to him, not a square inch of that insanely ripped body left to the imagination.

Tony’s mouth goes dry. Dear god. The man looks...

“Mr. Stark,” he acknowledges, stopping a few paces short of them, and looks at Coulson, suspicious stamped on his features. “And?"

“Agent Phil Coulson." He shoots a hand out, eager, and Tony suddenly has the strangest thought that the agent’s actually fangirling. "It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, sir.”

Rogers nods, and shakes his hands absently, his eyes drifting over to the new TV that’s not quite set up yet, where one of the privates who's helping shove it back against the wall has pulled up a colorized Bugs Bunny cartoon. “Agent?” he asks, not really looking at him. “Agent of what, exactly?”

Coulson just smiles a little, the most Tony’s ever seen him emote, actually, and nods. “We’ll be in touch, captain, when you’re ready to come back. Mr. Stark, pleasure visiting,” he says.

Tony nods back, but doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t miss how Rogers’ eyes follow Coulson out.

“Something on your mind, Captain Rogers?” he asks, nodding out towards the other exit, the one that leads out to the patient rooms, and the captain falls into step next to him, down the hall.

“They want me for whatever happening right now, don’t they?” he asks.

Not an idiot, Tony reminds himself, but keeps his face neutral. “What do you mean?”

“Some of these boys have injuries we never saw in Europe.”

“The Pacific was bad, too.”

“No, this is different. Explosives instead of bullets,” he says, and they turn the corner to his room. “Nothing like what HYDRA was doing, either. So I figure...”

“Hydra?” Tony asks innocently.

“Don’t play me for a fool, Mr. Stark,” Rogers says. His bathroom is half-open, and he disappears inside, the sound of running water in the sink following him. “I doubt very much that you’re ignorant of your cousin’s projects in the war!” he calls out.

Tony shoves his hands in his pockets, wandering over to the open window where Rogers has the room’s desk shoved, wondering how best to address this. “We might have a few contingency operations going on, here and there,” he says, equivocating. “But Red Skull wasn’t the first crazed, superpowered asshole in the world, and he isn’t the last.”

The water turns off. “Are you admitting that you do know about HYDRA, Mr. Stark?”

He thinks fast. “Can’t handle the money without knowing where it’s all going, Captain," he bullshits. "So I’ve got some insights into what...”

And he trails off, stopped cold.

It’s a pencil drawing. Dad, looking younger than Tony can ever remember him being, smiling a little, handsome...

“Oh,” Rogers says, right at his elbow now, towel around his neck, and his cheeks are just a bit red now. “I was just drawing from memory. The only person I’ve seen around here enough to draw is Nurse Romanov...”

“She probably wouldn’t take that very well,” Tony agrees, and looks at Rogers. Who’s looking out the window. Very far away. “Were you an artist?”

“I’d hoped, after the war was over, I could go back to that.” He sighs and rubs the towel through his wet hair. “But I guess the war’s never really over, is it?”

Tony doesn’t really know what to say to that. So he doesn’t try. He just pulls Dad’s picture back out. “You’ve got talent, captain. It looks just like him.”

“I suppose he’s older than this now,” Rogers says quietly. “I wouldn’t know what he looks like anymore.”

“He... he’s aging well enough, I guess.”

The captain laughs, but it sounds a little sad. “He ever settle down, get married, kids, all that? Always thought he'd be a good family man.”

“Married, yeah. Kids... not yet,” Tony replies, a little off-balance now. A good dad? Dad? Really? What is this?

“I’m sure he will be, then,” Rogers says with conviction, and touches the drawing reverently. “He could be a bit of a jerk sometimes, but he was solid, through and through.”

Tony suddenly feels very strange about this whole thing. About... whatever’s going on here. It’s just... just too...

So he excuses himself with some bullshit. The prototype TV in the lounge area, business back in town, _can’t stay today, Captain Rogers, so sorry..._

The other man looks a little crushed, but whatever he’s thinking, he doesn’t vocalize it.

But Tony can feel a sad set of blue, blue eyes on him, all the way back to the car.

He doesn’t like that.

+++++

Steve likes the running trails here. Long, winding, well-maintained, weaving through beautiful stretches of beautiful forest, deliciously cool in the early morning light.

He really does love running. It’s his favorite thing about this body Howard and Dr. Erskine gave him. How damn good it feels when he’s running.

There’s a rhythm to it. A steady pounding speed. A peace, really, when it doesn’t involve running away from bullets or energy weapons or...

But he doesn’t want to think about that right now.

So he just keeps running. 

How strange this place is, how strange the world has become in his time asleep, up in the Arctic ice.

He’d had a dream last night, Steve had, the first since he’d woken up here. Maybe his first dream since putting the HYDRA plane down. He’d dreamed about Howard, the warm scent of his cologne, his dark hair loose around his forehead, instead of slicked back like it always was, bent over the old planning table at the SSR headquarters, like he had been many a night when he thought nobody was around, nobody paying attention to what he was doing...

Howard had once told him, one of those nights, that he’d wanted to sign up when the war first broke out, that his father had fought in the trenches in France and he was going to do no less by the family name. But he had flat arches, or some nonsense like that, and the Army wouldn’t take him. 

_Figured I’d do more good here, like this, working on projects like yours_ , he’d said. _You’re quite the success, Steve. You’re an amazing man, doing amazing things. You should be proud of that..._

It was something that Howard said often. Grinning. But sometimes, Steve had felt like there was something more to it than some genius feeding his own ego, like Howard really...

He’d never had the courage to ask. Not in real life.

But in his dream last night, he’d reached out, touched Howard’s hand. Asked.

_Is that all I am to you, Howard? Some laboratory experiment?_

And Howard, in his dream, had turned away from the map of Europe, from the little HYDRA toys scattered across it, moved towards him, touched his shoulder, closed his eyes...

_You know the girls, Steve... they don’t mean..._

He’d woken up, Howard slipping away into the depths of his mind, and he’d lain there in the darkness, staring up at his ceiling until it had gotten light enough for him to go for a run.

But he’s clearing the woods now, the sounds of morning PT reaching him from the running track behind the clinic, and he tells himself to put it all aside. Howard’s older now, _married_ , his cousin had said, and Steve doesn’t know him anymore. Not that he ever really had a chance in the first place. Howard had loved - still loves - women. Enough to marry one, anyway. And he wouldn’t take that away from the man, even if given the chance.

Steve couldn’t do that to him. Wouldn’t be right.

He slows to a walk as he emerges from the oak grove that bounds the wide meadow around the clinic, and folds his hands up over his head, breathing hard, savoring the feel of it.

There is PT going on, right in the grassy center of the track. It’s not so different from anything he remembers from his days in the Army. Except it is. 

Everybody’s wearing strange clothing. A few different sets, based on service, of what Major Hutchinson has told him is PT gear. It’s strange stuff, not quite cotton, not quite anything Steve’s ever seen before. _I guess the fabric’s changed a bit since you took your ice nap, sir_ , she’d drawled, using the expression some of the boys in the clinic coined for his coma, and smiled at him. 

But that’s not the oddest thing about it. 

That would have to be the prosthetics that the boys here have. Prosthetics that are actually good enough to where they can run on them or do pull-ups, curves of strange metal - _alloys, Captain Rogers, rare earth minerals, aircraft grade materials, that sort of thing_ , the major had told him - that resemble nothing he’s ever seen before. The designs are all different - _prototypes, the doctors here are still doing stress testing on all of them_. It’s just... nothing that he’d have thought they had the technology to build yet.

Steve finds himself wandering over, and Major Hutchinson, who’s leading warm-ups right now from a low hill, yelling cadence at the top of her lungs in a manner that’s no less than impressive, holds up her replacement hand in greeting. The simplified fingers move a little as she waves, clenching into a fist with outstretched finger. He waves back, and then notices she’s pointing over to the far side of the field, closest to the clinic’s northern walls.

Where one of the boys is sitting on a bench, one of the doctors and somebody else, in jeans and a leather jacket, kneeling down in the grass next to him.

 _Somebody got hurt?_ he wonders, and picks up into an easy jog that brings him over in no time at all.

It's one of the patients, Vasquez, if Steve remembers right, the young Army private who’s got the full Japanese sleeve tattoo on his right arm, the one who lost both his legs when his squad’s jeep landed on them.

One of his prosthetics is off, the pale, scarred flesh of his severed thigh poking out from beneath his strange PT shorts, some kind of metallic fitting seemingly fused into the skin, and the doctor is talking to him in a low voice, examining the area.

But the other man...

It’s Mr. Stark, sitting on the bench beside the kid now, a sleek little kit of miniaturized tools open at his elbow. He’s not in his usual three-piece suit today, clad instead in a pair of blue jeans and a dark mechanic’s sweater that’s hugging his body in a positively indecent manner. The young private’s prosthetic is spread out across his lap, his concentration solely focused on whatever discreet adjustment he’s making to its innards.

And like that, so focused, lost in his work, dark hair falling down around his face, he looks so much like Howard. So very much like Howard, it hurts.

Steve coughs, trying to get rid of his own rising nervousness, and a pair of keen eyes roll up to meet him. “Captain,” Anthony Stark acknowledges, and goes back to his work. “Enjoy your morning run?”

“Yes, very much,” he says, and shifts a little, not sure of what to do or say here. “I uhh, I didn’t know you were helping with the prototype development...”

“What, are you kidding?” the private says eagerly, interrupting. “Mr. Stark? He’s like a genius when it comes to all this stuff. Fucking MIT grad. And come on, everything he’s done? Fuck, he built his own...”

“That’s enough, Kyle,” the doctor says quickly, effectively shutting him up, and throwing Mr. Stark a quick glance before refocusing his attention on his patient.

Stark laughs, but Steve doesn’t miss the edge of nervousness there as he smooths it all over, just like Howard might have. “It wouldn’t be any fun to fund a place like this if I couldn’t get hands-on every once in a while,” he says, chuckling, and closes the small panel, locking the innards of the artificial leg away again. “Here, kiddo, try it now. Adjusted the polarization matrix. Should stop those shocks you were getting.”

The doctor takes it, and the man stands up, running his fingers through his hair, slicking it back again, and Steve has the oddest impulse to shove that hand away, and do it himself.

He doesn’t, though. That would just be...

“Look, Captain Rogers, I’ve got some things to go over with staff here for the trustees meeting on Monday,” he says, walking them both away. “I can’t visit right now.”

That’s disappointing, really. “I completely understand, sir,” he says, flat, to keep it out of his voice.

“No, not... I was going to stay for lunch, if you want to do lunch.”

 _Do lunch?_ Steve wants to ask. Expressions are so odd these days, too. “Sure, that sounds good, Mr. Stark...”

And Stark stops them up, turns to him, expression odd. “Please, captain, I think we know each other well enough to switch to first names at this point. Don’t you agree?” 

Steve hesitates for a moment - it was after another Mr. Stark became _Howard_ that the emotions started to become a problem - but he looks almost hopeful. “Of course, Anthony. I’m sorry I didn’t bring it up, if you’re more comfortable...”

“Not a problem, Steve,” he says, and grinning, claps him on the shoulder and heads off, yelling back over his shoulder. “But check your room, okay? I got you something, want to make sure it’s right!”

That gift turns out, when Steve gets back to his room, to be a neatly packaged set of drawing supplies. Bundles of pencils, all different hardnesses and a rainbow of colors, plus a very generous watercolor kit, brushes, erasers, everything. Along with half a dozen spiral-bound books with paper that’s better than anything Steve’s ever seen. The feel alone is unbelievably good.

A note’s at the bottom.

_You need anything else, Captain Rogers, let Nurse Romanov know, and we’ll get it for you. Only the best for America’s heroes._

Steve feels a lump forming in his throat, eyes stinging a little, and he sets that note down on top of the pile, taking it all in. It’s the most thoughtful thing anyone’s done for him in a long time. The quality amazing. This must have cost...

But then he notices something strange on one of the notebooks. On the back, bottom corner. A white little square sticker, laid on top of the dark material of the book. A rectangle of dark stripes running across it, all different thicknesses, a little number beneath. Some other printing, smaller and better quality than anything he’s seen before...

 _What is that,?_ he wonders, peeling it off and holding it closer up for a better look. 

_What the hell could that possibly be?_

+++++

“He asked me about a bar code,” Natalie, Natasha, whatever the hell her name is, tells Tony as he’s coming in on Tuesday. She’s chewing gum, her nurse’s uniform unbuttoned a little too far. Boredom’s gushing out of her voice. “I take it you forgot to take that off?”

“Did he use the word bar code?” he says, short as he dares, trying for a lightness that even he can hear is completely forced. But he doesn't want to engage on this, and just tries to walk past her. 

He's got better things to do that deal with Widow.

Steve’s probably waiting for him. He couldn’t make it yesterday, caught up with boring business shit in Manhattan, or the day before that, working an emergency issue on the Stark Tower arc reactor, and he feels sort of awful about that.

But the spy’s not taking the hint, and following fast after him. “It’s a fuckin’ bar code, Tony,” she’s protesting, “I think I know what they look like!”

“I’m just saying, he probably doesn’t know because they didn’t have those back in his time...”

“...which is why he shouldn’t have one here. It’s not anywhere in Fury’s plan for him to be finding that sort of thing...”

“Honest mistake,” Tony lies as he jogs up the stairs of the main entrance. “Really, could have happened to anyone.”

And then Natasha grabs his arm and pulls him to a halt, hard. “Don’t fuck with me, Tony. You’re no idiot...”

He grins at her. “Why, thank you, doll.”

She slaps him, hard enough to make his face sting, which only gets him laughing. She jabs her finger at him. “I know you did that on purpose,” she snaps. “I want to know why.”

Tony stops chuckling, rubs his cheek, considers what she’s asking. She cares about getting a real answer - she has to, or she wouldn’t be asking, woman’s one of the most cynical he’s ever met. 

But telling her...

Dad had always talked about Captain Rogers in the most glowing terms. _American hero, brilliant tactician, born leader_ , but he’d always grown up thinking - hoping - that it was all a pile of bull. That Rogers hadn’t been _better_ than him. But over the last ten days or so...

Steve’s no idiot. That had been pretty easy to figure out. But all the other stereotypes Tony had had of the man, all the nights as a teen, stinging from dad’s criticism of his laziness, of his cynicism, apathy, telling himself that Captain fucking America, dad’s hero, wasn’t better than him, was just some hopelessly jingoistic sap who’d been taken advantage of by the US government, who’d been played for a fool, a jerk, a celebrity soldier who’d had it so goddamn easy...

Well, that had gone clean out the window the last time he was here. After he’d gotten done with reviewing the circuitry issue with Vasquez’s chemoneural implant interfaces. After he’d gotten back to Steve’s room for that promised lunch, found the man sitting at the small desk, pencil in hand.

“Anthony,” he’d stammered a little, shooting out of his chair and slamming down the cover of the notebook. “I, uhh...”

“Lunch?” Tony had offered.

And then found a way to fob the captain off on one of the doctors, so he could go back and see what he’d been drawing.

It’d been simple. Incredibly simple, not nearly finished, but incredibly descriptive, a strong, fluid style that resembled nothing of that faux-anime crap that's so prevalent these days. 

A dark room, something out of _Raiders of the Lost Ark_. One man - short, skinny, blonde, barely bigger than a boy - hunched up, staring down at something unseen on the table, an oversized, star-spangled shield beside him, a bandolier around his thin shoulders that’s entirely too big. 

It was Steve, Tony knew, Steve the way he must have been before dad did... whatever it was that dad did to him. 

And there was something so poignant, so personal, so sad about it. He’d felt bad about looking at it almost instantly, and the image is still haunting him, still rattling around in his brain. Because for the first time since this whole thing started, since he first heard dad’s story about _the super-soldier name Captain America_ , he’s found himself wondering who Steve Rogers really is. Who the man behind the legend is. Maybe even feeling something for him that’s almost like...

Before, he didn’t want to play this game because it’s, well, it’s pretty fucking stupid. Fury’s plan, to have him brief a few things every day, before dropping a big, raw revelation, _welcome to the future, Captain America_ in the man’s lap. So he’d set it up like this, little things, indicators of bigger things, that could help Steve figure this out faster. But now, no he’s finding himself not wanting to play by Fury’s rules because, honestly, Steve deserves more than this. Better.

But Natasha’s still looking at him, expecting an answer.

So he gives her one. As close to what he’s thinking here. Baiting her.

“Rogers isn’t an idiot. He’s going to figure it out sooner or later, and we’d best just control that process, don’t you think?” He shrugs. “Fury wanted to tell. I want to show.”

She nods slowly, more to her own thoughts than to his, and bites her lip. “So we’re talking about accelerating Fury’s timeline? Getting this whole dog and pony show over with faster?”

“Exactly.”

Natasha’s quiet for a moment more. “And you’re going to do this by introducing these kind of variables into this place until it reaches... what, some kind of weirdness critical mass and he starts asking questions we have to answer? How is that better than the boss’ original plan?”

Tony's not really sure how to answer that. How he himself feels about that. Because on the surface, yeah, maybe... but that’s not what he wants to do.

He does want to take Steve out of this fantasy land. Show him around. Let him see the world, piece by piece, and figure out for himself how those pieces fit together. Let him explore this new reality, in all its beauty and ugliness. But at his own pace, on his own time, as he’s ready. Not when S.H.I.E.L.D. is. Not when the world forces itself on him. 

And Steve deserves someplace secure to retreat to, on this long journey home, and Tony is realizing just how much he wants to give the other man that. How much he wants to protect this place for him, how much he wants to keep him safe.

He doesn’t think this spy-girl is going to understand that, though, when he barely understands it himself. When he can’t - doesn’t want to - vocalize any of it. So he just shrugs. “Something like that.”

“Isn’t that more manipulative than just telling him?” she says, and smirks a little, nodding again. Like she’s incredibly amused by this all, and that sort of makes Tony want to slap her back. “How do I help?”

"I'll let you know," he says, and shoves past her. "Now if you'll excuse me, Nurse Romanov, I believe I have a patient to go visit."

Steve's in his room, drawing again, when Tony comes in, the fine muscle of his back standing out against the thin wrapper of t-shirt, so... 

He stands, though, turns around and sort of smiles at Tony, like he's not sure if he should, if he can, and there's something so innocent about it, so pure.

 _They don't make 'em like that anymore_ , he hears dad saying in the back of his mind.

"You don't have to keep coming by, Anthony," Steve says, reaching around behind him to close the notebook.

"Course I do," he says, hands clenching in his pockets, a warmth growing in his stomach that he doesn't quite understand. God, has it only been two days since they last saw each other? It feels like longer. "I'm beginning to enjoy our chats."

"Me too," Steve says, and their eyes meet across the room...

And that's when Tony realizes he's falling for this man.

Hard.

Which, more likely than not, is not going to end well. For anybody.

+++++

After about two weeks, two weeks of rest and decent sleep and Anthony’s daily visits - the visits he’s really started looking forward to - Steve’s starting to feel normal again.

Except... things aren’t normal.

It’s not that it’s not all good. Because it is. He likes this place that he’s at, all white columns and mellow brick, green grounds spread around it, the woods beyond, a riot of life that never existed in Brooklyn or wartime Germany.

He likes the other patients, too. The military boys here for convalescence. The officers who’ve decided he’s part of their club, and wouldn’t take no for an answer last night to the offer of poker and cigars and booze, that Major Hutchinson covering his buy-in. 

Most of the soldiers here have lost limbs, a few are completely paralyzed, but they all seem incredibly positive, in god spirits. They all tell him variations on the same thing when he asks about that - _Stark’s a genius, if anybody’s going to get me walking again it’s Mr. Stark, I was so excited when Walter Reed told me I could go to one of his clinics, he’s a fucking hero..._

Even if they all shut up real fast when he asks what they mean by _hero_. Even if the most he can get out of Major Hutchinson is a quick _he’s not really running Stark Industries anymore, but he’s the driving force in its R-and-D efforts._

He likes the schedule. Getting up with the sun, running, coming back for breakfast, finding Anthony waiting somewhere for him, their visit, the long slow afternoons, drawing in his room at night, dreaming... It’s idyllic. Almost perfect.

Except...

It’s not.

Because there are other things here, odd things, that don’t quite add up.

Things like the television, which evidently became a thing a year or two ago. Which is just bizarre - movies Steve’s used to, but those are typically classy affairs, with theaters and ushers and all that. But television, or tee-vee, like the younger boys call it, is more casual, more informal, lots of cowboy serials and something called I Love Lucy, which is on every night. They all seem addicted to it, even though they’re constantly kvetching about the choices in programming. 

Like Nurse Romanov is weird, with her short-cut red hair and uniform unbuttoned a little too far. Who he saw having a knife throwing contest with one of the Marines yesterday. Who always gives him a load of attitude and won’t let him call her ma’am, like a decent woman does. Who talks stranger than any woman he’s ever met before. She seems like an American, too, despite the last name, but not one he’s ever met before.

Like the Air Force. That supposedly new service branch. Steve’s not an idiot. He can tell the difference, the highly pronounced difference, between the Army and Air Force boys here. Which is making him think that it’s a lot older than a year or two.

Like the prosthetics. Sleek, elegant, graceful prosthetics that let them walk and hold things again, let them run around that odd track behind the facility.

Like the tattoos on the boys here, bright and beautiful and everywhere, everywhere on their bodies. The artistry in them Steve admire, but some of the subject matter is horrific, skulls and tentacles and thorns and blood and big-breasted women with demon horns. It seems so at odds with how decent most of the soldiers are.

Like the one boy who had his dogtags hanging out one afternoon during a PT session Steve was helping Major Hutchinson run, _Wicca_ stamped right where his religious preference should have been.

Like the food, which is somehow both more exotic and more tasteless than Steve remembers it as ever being before.

Like how a few of the guys have started wearing blue jeans, different cuts of shirt and shoes than what he’s used to, and it seems like it’s a few more people, every day.

Like the phrases that get thrown around sometimes, casual as breathing, when he’s not in the room. Phrases he catches when he’s passing by, or catching it from down the hall. _AOR, dee-vee-dee, eye-pod, yo dawg, humvee, eye-eee-dee, em-four, fighter jet, internet, towel-heads, all the things..._

Like the Air Force guy in the crowded lounge right now, visiting with who Steve just assumes is a friend or a brother, until the visitor wraps a hand around the man’s neck, and pulls him into a kiss...

“Coffee?”

He jumps a little at the sound of Anthony’s voice right behind him, and finds himself almost knocking a paper cup right back in the man’s face. The man evades - graceful, Steve finds himself thinking - and sits down right next to him with a big grin on his face.

“Almost got me. And your latte,” he jokes, and holds out the huge paper cup. It’s got some kind of waffled paper cozy around it, and it’s printed in bright green ink.

With a naked mermaid.

“Latte?” Steve asks, squinting at that mermaid. So strange...

“Italian style coffee. It’s about as Italian as pizza, bit of a fad right now really, but it’s tasty,” Anthony says. He’s in a more casual cut of suit today, no vest, no tie, the top button undone, and there’s something about that that just makes him look... “Thought you might want one.”

Steve nods and takes the coffee carefully. He can’t help but look back at that... couple. Kissing. In public. In a room full of military boys. Since when was that...

“Cat got your tongue, captain?” Stark asks, and Steve shakes his head, hoping like hell he’s not flushed. God, he hasn’t seen something like that in so, so long...

He has to take about three sips of coffee, latte, whatever, to cover himself.

“No, no, we... have things changed that much in eight years?” he says when can get it out.

Anthony, next to him, follows his eyes. “Ah. Right. That.”

Like it’s no big deal.

“What do you mean, that?” Steve hisses, low, incredulous. “They’re... kissing. In public!”

The industrialist looks at him for a moment, expression unreadable, and then gets up. “Come on, captain,” he says, and offers the man a hand up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

As they walk outside, coffees left behind, he finds himself remembering. The homosexual community in New York had been active, but subtle. It was there if a man knew how to find it, and more importantly, what he wanted out of it. Steve had gone to the right dance halls and the right bars, but he’d never gone home with anyone. It had been almost frightening, that world, for the scrawny young man he’d been. And besides, even then, when faced with what he thought he wanted, it hadn’t been what he wanted.

He’d wanted Bucky once. Wanted Howard - who he still can't bring himself to write, as it seems the man has moved on, forgotten him, left him behind. But neither of those had been quite right. Because what he really wanted a connection with someone, a bond, something more than the physical, a truly deep friendship, a commitment... and the men in his life, the ones he'd trusted... hadn't they just been filler? Convenience?

“You still with me, Steve?” Anthony asks, and Steve blinks a few times as he realizes they’re standing next to his car. His gorgeous Rolls-Royce Phantom.

Keys in hand.

With a strange pair of sunglasses on now that seem to wrap around his entire face.

He shakes his head. “Anthony...”

“Come on, big guy,” the industrialist says, and raps the hood of the Rolls. “It’s a beautiful day. Let’s go for a drive. Get you out of here. We can talk.”

Steve feels like he should protest. Say something. Do anything other than get in this car right now. There’s something odd about this moment, too, something off, something not quite right...

“What the hell?” he replies slowly, and feels the butterflies start hammering away inside.

Anthony’s smile is more than worth it. Whatever unknown risk he's taking. Whatever it is that Anthony wants to talk about.

Yet...

 _Please don't let him notice_ , he prays silently. _Don't let him see._

The road that leads away from the clinic is long and winding and empty, mottled with sunlight falling through the think canopy of leaves overhead. It’s marked down the center with a bold yellow line that dashes under the car’s long hood in short little bursts. There are signs, white, square, unfamiliar, with big, black numbers on them. Steve doesn’t ask about those - just one more thing to add to the overall oddness of this all. Anthony’s not talking, despite his earlier declaration about conversation.

He just smiles when Steve asks where they’re going.

And keeps driving.

Steve not sure how long it is before Anthony pulls off the main road, down some narrow drive that seem barely wide enough to hold the massive bulk of the car, and before he can ask where they are, the trees open up, and he doesn’t have to.

“Come on,” Anthony says again, getting out now, stretching his hands.

They’re on a grassy bank of some stream, or perhaps a small river. There are a few little concrete slabs with roofs put up over them, picnic benches and grills on ashen stands poking up all around. Steve takes this in as he follows Anthony down a gently sloping little hill, wondering what in the hell this is all about.

The other man's waiting for him down at the bottom of the hill, where it peters out into a rocky bank, a wide finger of lake, on the edge of a dock that leads out over the water. His shoes are in his hand, his feet bare, and there’s something about that that’s so exposed, so contrary to his usually perfect appearance, that Steve feels himself being drawn forward.

Magnetic, this man.

He stops, still on the grass, and kneels to take off his own boots - which are different from the ones they used to issue back in the war, and are still new enough to pinch. “What are we doing out here, Anthony?” he asks.

“Thought you might want to get out.”

It’s not the truth. Steve can practically hear hm equivocating. But he lets it go, stands up and toes off his boots, and Anthony laughs a little as he loses his balance and has to grab one of his shoulders in order to keep from falling over.

But he does manage to get his boots off without knocking either of them over, and before long, they’re at the end of the stubby little dock, pants rolled up, feet dangling in the cool water.

And that’s when Anthony finally starts to talk.

“So... you wanna tell me what was bothering you about those guys?” he says, quiet and even. Like he actually wants to know. Like it isn’t some kind of trick question, or foregone conclusion.

Steve doesn’t know how to answer that. “They were kissing. In public.”

“Right. We covered that already. So? Problems?” The industrialist’s dark eyes are even, level, calm. Like he really, really wants to know. Like he...

But that’s impossible, isn’t it?

The world’s cracked, Steve realizes right then. Cracked while he was asleep, changed in irreparable and incomprehensible ways. Things vanished into the darkness of the past, new things coming down from the future, too strange to understand. How can things change so much? How can so much of the familiar drain away, and be replaced with so much new? For two men to be able to sit there in a crowded room, to kiss each other, without shame, without any concern at all?

“Everything’s so odd,” he says, and tears his eyes away from Anthony - frustrating, strange, beautiful Anthony, who’s so much like his cousin Howard, and so different. Howard never cared enough to talk to him like this, Howard never wanted to know anything, really, about him. Not beyond the soldier. Howard makes weapons, sends them out to break things apart. Anthony’s here, with his clinics and the Stark fortune, trying to put those broken men back together after they come home...

“Steve?” Anthony asks, edging a little closer, and his fingers play on the warm wood beneath them. “Steve, what’s going through that head of yours?”

He can’t say it. Can’t say the words to Anthony that he never said to Howard, even though he’s probably got more reason... more reason with this man...

“Aha,” Anthony says then, with the satisfaction of a man who’s figured something out. It startles Steve into looking at him. He’s grinning now, that wide, shit-eating grin of his. “So that is it, is it?”

“Is what...” Steve begins, trying to protest something he doesn’t even understand, the thickness of the air between them, the closeness, some kind of tension growing...

...and then shattered.

When Anthony slides his hand over Steve’s own, and leans with just his lips, and kisses him. Pressing forward, pressing into him, and they’re shifting on the wooden slats, turning into each other, Steve pushing back across it, Anthony moving in on top of him, straddling his lap, the soft, easy pulse of that kiss demanding nothing, a hand grabbing up on Steve’s bicep squeezing hard, _eager for everything_ , Steve thinks wildly. 

God it feels good. Feels like nothing’s ever felt. Not even kissing Peggy. Feels...

But it ends as abruptly as it begins, with Anthony pulling back, sucking his lower lip into his mouth and lays his forehead against Steve’s own, breathing with him, not letting him go. He’s warm and surprisingly heavy, a comforting bulk on the soldier’s lap, and he dares to brush his fingers up into Anthony’s slicked hair, down his neck, the hollow of his throat, down...

Anthony grabs his hand right as his curious finger dips into the vee of his collar, pulling him away. “Not yet,” he says quietly, and sits back, so that they can look at each other properly. Still holding Steve’s hand, he rubs his thumb against the deep lines crossing his palm. “Not here.”

Mind reeling, half in shock, more than a little aroused, but Steve shakes his head, trying to clear the cobwebs and _think_. “Things can’t have changed this much, Anthony,” he replies low, barely above a whisper. “Not in just a few years.”

“You’re probably right,” Anthony agrees, back to that careless tone he always uses, like they weren't just...doing that.

“So what is it then?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know,” he stammers back. He feels so off-balance, so unsure of himself, like he hasn’t felt since before the serum. Expose. Lord, how exposed he is right now. "You’re the one with the answers, aren’t you?”

Anthony leans in, and Steve shivers in anticipation of another one of those kisses. But it doesn’t come. 

“Any time you want, Steve, I’m here,” he murmurs, and kisses his cheek softly, fondly. Taps his chest. Stands up. Offers Steve a hand. “For anything.”

“Anthony...”

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get you back. Before Nurse Romanov decides to eviscerate me for stealing her favorite patient.”

They don’t talk on the way back. Anthony doesn’t say anything except to say goodbye as his driver comes back out of the clinic, and he gets in the back seat.

Driving away.

But Steve’s glad for it. He can still feel Anthony’s weight in his lap and his lips against his own and the clench of the man’s hand against his arm, and he doesn’t know how to feel about any of it.

It haunts him for the rest of the day, and when he goes to bed that night, it follows him into his dreams.

+++++

He doesn’t see Anthony again until that next afternoon. He keeps hoping he’ll come by, that they can talk about what happened, so he can ask about how it works these days, if men can go steady with each other now, if it’s still the way it was in New York before the war, casual meetings, casual encounters, what Anthony wants from him. Even if he's thinking, that's not exactly what he wants from Anthony. Nothing that empty.

But the man doesn’t show. Not after his morning run. Not after breakfast. And by lunch, Steve gives up waiting and tries to draw something other than Anthony.

Steve’s headed down the hall towards dinner that night, Major Hutchinson keeping pace with him, having dug him out of his notebooks, trying to convince him that he needs to come to morning PT sessions with everyone else, _serum or not, it’ll be good for the boys to have their asses kicked by..._

Then she stops, mid-sentence, pausing a little, enough to reach out and punch somebody in the shoulder lightly. “Good to see you, sir!” she says cheerfully, and keeps walking.

It’s Anthony. Talking to Nurse Romanov. In a pair of jeans hugging low across his hips, some graphite-black t-shirt on that, as he turns around, seems to have been printed with some kind of design... some solid outline in gold and blue, letters spelling out _STAR TREK_. It’s stretched across some solid, roundish thing underneath, and Steve remembers the way Anthony stopped him yesterday, wouldn’t let him touch...

“Captain,” he says warmly, and smiles at him in a way that makes Steve’s stomach turn over. Suddenly, he’s nervous. “How you doin’ today?”

It’s odd, seeing him out of a suit, like that day on the track, when he looked so... “Fine,” Steve says, trying to keep things level in his own head. He doesn’t like being off balance. Bad habit in a soldier, that kind of emotionality. But Major Hutchinson is walking away, and he’s got no way out of this situation. “Can we... can I have a word?”

“Sure,” Anthony says, and looks back at the nurse. “You good with all that, doll?”

Her normally disinterested expression sours considerably. “One of these days, Mr. Stark,” she snaps and turns sharply away, her heels clicking harshly on the mellow wood of the floor.

“That woman scares me sometimes,” Anthony shudders, and looks at him again. “Your room, Captain Rogers?”

Steve just nods, and lets himself be led away.

Anthony kicks the door shut behind them, but makes no move to move away from it. Steve retreats back over to his desk, not at all sure what to expect from any of this, not trusting himself right now. Just being this close to Anthony is making him anxious. His palms are starting to sweat.

“So,” the other man says, cool as a cucumber, as if nothing is wrong at all right now, “what did you want to talk to me about?”

 _Courage, Rogers_ , he tells himself, and breathes deep. “Why’d you kiss me yesterday?” 

“Ah. That.” The slightly smug expression that seems to be standard for Anthony - so similar to Howard, really, in that respect - falls away, and his eyes soften. “Was that a problem, Steve?”

Steve doesn’t know how to answer that, how to protect himself from his answer to that, and then it just comes out anyway. “I... I don't know.” He doesn’t like the way that comes out, though. Doesn’t at all sound like him. It’s too... exposed. “You weren’t around today, I haven’t seen you at all. What was I supposed to think?”

Anthony, sort of wandering around the room, looks a bit surprised, and then he laughs a little. “I’m sorry about that. I’ve been in the lab all day. We’ve been having hell with the new interface circuitry. I was working on it.”

“So you’ve been here all day? I didn’t see your car out in the drive.”

“Rode my bike up,” he says quickly, too quickly, and as Steve arches an eyebrow - a bicycle, really? - corrects himself. “Motorcycle. My going fast... machine. Very good for getting from Manhattan to here in an efficient manner...” and he trails off as he reaches the desk, sees the open page of Steve’s notebook. “Excellent likeness of me, if I do say so myself,” he comments lightly, and then seriousness creeps back in, his smile shifting into something else. “You really are a good artist, Steve.”

“It’s just a sketch,” he replies lamely, and shakes his head. “Anthony...” It sounds like begging, and Steve hates himself a little for that, but he can’t help himself. “Anthony, why’d you kiss me yesterday?”

“Simple, captain. I did it because I wanted to. And I thought you wanted me to. Was I wrong?”

“No, but...”

And now Anthony’s coming towards him, prowling, Steve thinks, like some predator locked on to its prey, and god help him, it’s incredibly erotic...

“I’d like to do it again, Steve,” Anthony says, and pins him back against the wall, a hand on his hip, one above his shoulder. It’d be so easy to push him off, push him away, take control back, but Steve can’t bring himself to do that. Can’t bring himself to do anything to stop this right now. It’s just... “Would you let me kiss you again?”

“I don’t think we should, here...”

“Door’s closed, it’s just you and me,” Anthony murmurs in his ear, and his nose nudges the soft skin underneath as an extremely talented mouth places a chaste little kiss to his neck. “Nobody will see. They wouldn’t care if they did. There’s nothing but good things here, Steve.”

“Anthony...”

“C’mon. Let me in.”

Steve pushes him back a little. Enough to look at him. See what he’s saying. Why. Because his cousin always was a bit of a ladies man, always saying exactly what a girl wanted to hear in order to get her to agree to whatever he wanted from her, and he can’t get that out of his head right now. He and Howard are so alike...

Anthony’s not letting anything out, though. _A man used to hiding from the world_ , Steve thinks, and considers just telling him to come back when he’s ready for what Steve wants from him.

But then he sees the fabric of his shirt pulling around whatever’s underneath, whatever Anthony didn’t want him touching yesterday, and he reaches out for it.

This time, Anthony doesn’t stop him.

Through the shirt, it feels round, metallic, a cylinder sunk into his chest, through skin and bone and...

“I used to be on the weapons design side of things,” Anthony says quietly, laying his hand over Steve’s, holding it in place. “Loved it. Explosions, the challenge, all that shit. But I got caught in an ambush over there a few years back, took a load of shrapnel straight to my chest. This keeps it from reaching my heart and killing me.”

“You built it?”

“In a cave,” and Anthony smiles a little, even though there’s no humor in it now, “from a box of scraps.”

“That when you got out of the weapons business? Didn’t like the killing?”

“Nobody likes the killing. But we were killing the wrong people. Eight airmen died in that ambush with me. I vowed I’d never let anything Stark Industries built hurt them again, that I wasn’t going to put them out there in harm’s way, take risks I wasn’t taking.”

“So you built clinics instead?” he asks, something in his chest expanding now. The metal beneath that shirt is warm. He can feel Anthony breathing. “Like Howard’s trying to rebuild Japan? That a whole family decision?”

Something dark crosses Anthony’s face, and he tries to say something, but the words don’t seem to come. He shakes his head then, and his hand that was bracing on the wall curls around the back of Steve’s head, and before any more questions can be asked or answers hidden away, they’re kissing, and it doesn’t matter anymore.

+++++

Steve’s hand is still on the arc reactor. Still there. His palm twisting around it, framing the edge, and in the back of Tony’s mind somewhere he cares about that. What if Steve accidentally takes the magnetic cover off, what if it catches on his hand, how’s he going to explain that light...

But Steve’s curling his fingers under his belt, pulling him closer, kissing him, kissing him back like he hadn’t done yesterday on the dock. Wanting him. Asking him for everything.

And that’s sort of got priority right now.

Tony groans at the thought of it, and runs a hand around Steve’s waist, licks at his still-closed lips. The other man makes a startled little noise, and jerks back, but Tony was expecting that. So he follows, leans in, reclaims that mouth, and opens his own.

After another moment’s hesitation, Steve does the same.

Tony’s got the lead at first, and he seems content for that. To let Tony turn them around, pull them out into the room, pull Steve’s hand down onto his ass, press them together, kiss him harder, tongue thrusting in, licking at the roof of his mouth, sucking, breaking away to taste the stubble on his jaw, nibbling, soft and then more aggressive, getting the most delicious sounds in return...

It deepens from there, grows, expands. For every little thing that Steve lets Tony do, he moans, and does it back. Takes the cues, and runs with them. So soon it’s him pushing them across the room, him with a hand desperately threaded into Tony’s hair, him pulling their groins together, him drawing the frantic little sounds from Tony, him, him, _him_. He’s clearly never done this before, or never done it like this, probably not since the serum, at the very least, so he’s probably not used to the way it feels to overpower somebody, how good it can be to be in control.

And Tony groans a little as his cock swells to the point of pain inside the confines of his jeans, trapped between their bodies. He can feel Steve’s answering that, but it’s hard to isolate just that one feeling. There’s so much of him, so much of him everywhere...

 _He’s so warm_ , Tony thinks to himself absently, knocking back into the bed as he does so, and that’s so sudden, he almost falls over. The momentum yanks Steve down, though, but he doesn’t have time to let go, and they both end up on a heap together on the floor. 

Steve looks stunned.

Tony can’t stop himself from laughing - it’s ridiculous, really - but under it, he’s got some terrible nervousness trying to crawl its way out of his stomach. Because of what he’s got in his back pocket, what he brought from home when he flew out here today.

Yesterday had been... well, not exactly unplanned. But it hadn’t gone exactly the way he’d thought it would have. He was trying to shake Steve up a bit, provide something shocking enough for him to respond to it, ask the questions that needed to be asked.

He’d walked into an argument about it yesterday. Before he’d found Steve in the lounge. Between that goddamn S.H.I.E.L.D. agent - who admittedly has been more helpful lately, but still - and the major who’s hand he’s currently trying to replace.

_He’s not responding, Tony. We’re doing just what you said, and he’s like, fucking broken or something..._

_You ever been in combat, Romanov?_

_Phhft. Yeah, I’ve killed people..._

_No, honey, I’m talking about combat. Real, sustained combat. For months at a time. We’ve all read the stories about him. They took a boy from Brooklyn, put him through minimal initial training, fucked with his body, and then sent him out on the front lines of..._

He’d butted in right about there. “As much as I’d love to watch a catfight right now, ladies, I don’t think either of you get this. Rogers put himself out there, he volunteered.”

“I know you’re a superhero and a genius and everything, Tony, but not everybody grew up with pet robots,” Hutchinson replied levelly. 

Natasha had just rolled her eyes.

“He hasn’t asked any of us what happened in the war. Hasn’t asked any of us about anything,” the major had continued, glaring at the other woman. “I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t care or he hasn’t noticed that everything’s kind of fucking weird around here...”

“He's talked to me about it."

"You know what I mean, Tony. It's weird." She’d shaken her head. “I just keep telling myself, for him, it’s only been a few weeks. He might need more time to..."

Natasha had just groaned, and pushed off the wall. “A week, Tony. I wanna help, but Fury wants some progress and he wants it this week. I’m siding with whoever’s working faster here.”

Tony had given some thought to what both of them had said. And then approved the request for that one gay soldier’s boyfriend to come see him. He thought that might shake some questions out of a good little Catholic boy from the 1940s.

But instead, Steve had just looked...

Well, like he needed to be kissed. 

Even dismissing the possibility of his own biased view of the situation, Tony had figured that explained a lot about the man.

What he hadn’t been planning on was Steve actually acting like he wanted him back. He’d hoped, but this...

He stops Steve from kissing him, and stands, offering a hand, pulling Steve up after him. “You good, captain?” he asks, soft as he can, and lays a hand on Steve’s hip, sliding it around slowly, fingers tiptoeing towards the tantalizing bulge in the front of his pants, brushing his fly.“You want more?”

Steve just looks at him. And then looks down. “Anthony, I don’t...”

“You don’t want me?” he tries to tease, insides twisting a bit at the thought of being told to go home, go away, right now. And shit, he tries so hard to keep emotion out of these things. But there’s something about Steve’s that just... “Because you seemed like you were enjoying that just now.”

“I was,” Steve blurts, and he sounds just as nervous as Tony feels. “I mean, I am, I just... this... I... I’ve never been very good at this sort of thing...”

“That’s okay,” Tony grins back, relieved that he’s not being told to go home, and moves in for another kiss. “I’m great at it.”

Steve stops him then, that nervousness replaced with some kind of conviction that seems to spring out of nowhere, but feels completely natural on him. Like a second skin or something. It’s interesting. “That’s what I don’t want, Anthony, not like I’ve watched Howard do. I’ve never wanted it like that.”

The mere mention of Howard, though - whatever the hell the deal was between the two of them, how fucking pissed Steve’s going to be when he eventually finds out his dad’s been dead for twenty years, the insane thought that Tony’s anywhere near as bad as his father - is enough to completely kill any interest Tony’s got in sex right now.

“Fine,” he says, not sure if he’s more upset or hurt by that, and steps back, starts readjusting his shirt, slicks his hands back through the mess Steve’s made of his hair. “Fine. You think I’m like Howard, that’s fine. I’ll go.”

Steve settles back against the bed, looking confused now. “Anthony, I didn’t mean...”

That, for some reason, that really pisses Tony off. He’s so sick of it. Dad putting Steve on a pedestal, Steve doing the same to Dad, who doesn’t fucking deserve it... 

“I know you guys are war buddies and everything,” he snaps as he continues to back up, that old anger growing in him now, the words coming without his permission, “but he was an asshole. You know what he did after the war? When he wasn’t out combing the Arctic for you? He started drinking, Steve. Whatever happened out there, he just started taking it all out on everyone around him. You know how many nights I sat there at the dinner table with that man and listened to him scream at me in some drunken rage about how I would never turn out to be as good as...”

And then, right before the word _his precious Captain fucking America_ comes out, Tony realizes how perilously close he is to spilling everything, he catches himself. Catches the expression on Steve’s face, horrified. Realizes. And stutters to a halt.

They stare at each other for a moment. 

Until Tony can’t take it anymore, and has to get the hell away from here. Before he starts thinking about dad again, all that shit... 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, quiet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize he’d...”

“I’m gonna go,” Tony says lamely, trying to keep it light, failing horribly. He hates shit like this, hates feeling exposed like this, like when Steve was touching his reactor. Like everything Steve does. How is is possible to feel this naked in front of another person, still fully-clothed? “I’m just gonna go, Steve. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“No,” Steve says, and stands, shoulders square, like he’s come to some kind of decision. “That's not okay, Anthony.”

“What do you...” 

But before he can finish, Steve’s right in front of him, arms folding around his waist, and then Tony’s back on the bed, on his back, Steve kneeling up over him.

“No,” he says again, touching his chest, touching his reactor. “No, Anthony, I’m sorry. I guess... I guess I’m no better with men than I am with women, huh?”

Tony can’t help but smile back at that, despite the roil of emotion in his gut right now - that was something dad had mentioned a few times. “Let’s start with the easy stuff, Steve. What do you want?”

Steve bites his lip, hesitating, and then Tony gets it. Has a sudden flash of what life must have been like for Steve before the serum, and he gets it.

He knows what Steve wants.

So he starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Let’s get naked,” he suggested.

And, amazingly, Steve grins back and kisses him again.

It grows from there, like before, but faster, because it’s really not that difficult for Tony’s cock to take a renewed interest in the proceedings once clothes start coming off in earnest - everything but the Star Trek shirt is off in about thirty seconds, and that is staying the hell on until he’s sure Steve can’t knock the cover off. The other man protests that a little bit, but that Tony slides his hand across his impressive length, slicking it up with his own precome and making him groan like a man dying.

“Like that?”

“Oh, damn, Anthony...”

“Just getting started, kiddo,” he grins back.

There are so many things he could, would fucking _love_ , do to this man. 

So. Many. Things. 

But Steve looks - and feels, judging from how goddamn hard he is, how his cock is pulsating like this - like he’s not going to be up for much foreplay tonight. Like he needs this, right the hell now. So Tony just satisfies himself with straddling Steve, kissing him everywhere, showing those big hands where they need to go, how they need to touch him, what makes this all good for them both, and reaches off the bed for his discarded pants.

And the condom. And the packet of lube he’s got in there.

Pulling back up, he lays them both on Steve’s chest, and watches confusion spread on the other man’s face. “Slick, we’re gonna need that,” he says, tapping the first foil packet, “and I’m guessing the condom’s not going to fit. You’ll probably like that better, anyway.”

“What?” Steve asks.

Tony just smiles at him - because who’d have thought he’d ever be having sex with Captain America, honestly? - and flicks the condom off, opting for the slick instead. “Let’s get this show on the road, huh?” he asks with a wink, and rips the lube open with his teeth.

It doesn’t take long to get himself worked open enough to take Steve. He’s had penty of time to get his technique down over the years. And besides, the man might be huge, and he really, really is, but Tony likes it a little tight. It’s all very routine...

Or, at least, it usually is.

But there’s something a little different about it tonight. The way Steve’s watching him as he bucks his hips up, slides a finger into himself, sucks air hard at the first breach, then again as he pulls out and thrusts in with two, scissoring wide. How Steve runs his hands around to cup the rise of Tony’s ass, how shy he seems about it, how he can’t seem to top himself from tossing Tony forward into another kiss. How goddamn young the man is, asleep for seventy years and still only... what? Twenty-five, twenty-six?

It’s all almost more than Tony can take. Way too much. His body clenches around his fingers and his cock throbs, and it’s not going to take much for him either, he knows.

“You ready?” he asks, spreading the rest of the slick over Steve’s cock in quick, efficient strokes. “You ready for this?”

Steve nods, and then shakes his head as Tony wriggles back a little to line himself up. “Not... can I be...”

Ah. Of course. Why that makes sense, Tony’s not sure, but it does. “Sure thing, Cap,” he nods back, and manages to maneuver them both around without falling off the bed, jamming a pillow just right under his hips, brushing his thighs up along the outside of Steve’s. “Better?”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, and moves forward, one hand braced on Tony’s hip, the other - guided by Tony’s - curling around his cock, lining up. “So, like...”

And Tony sucks air, hard, as the drooling tip nudges the stretched ring of muscle. Fuck, that feels good. “Oh, fuck...”

“I’ll take it that’s a yes?” Steve says, and without really waiting for any kind of confirmation, pushes forward.

Tony has to remember how to breathe as that huge cock glides into him inch by inch, tortuously slow. Steve’s big, bigger than anyone he’s had in a long time, but it’s okay, it feels fucking fantastic, a burning heat drilling through him, right up into his heart itself. It seems like an inferno between them, both of them sweating profusely at this point. And Steve seems equally affected, eyes shut, face flushed, hand squeezing hard enough on Tony’s hip to bruise. But it’s still not enough, might never be enough with this man, and Tony drops a hand to his own raging erection as Steve sinks in to the hilt and holds, trembling a little.

“Is that...”

“It’s perfect,” Tony groans. “Now, please, please fucking move.

Steve does. Slow, uncertain thrusts, like he’s not sure how much he can give or what Tony’s going to be able to take. But it feels fucking amazing, and he can’t hold back his groans at the sensations wracking his body right now, and, encouraged, Steve picks up the pace.

“You gotta tell me if...”

Tony doesn’t stop him though as he goes faster, deeper, every thrust a little bit better than the one before, every nerve ending in his body screaming out its approval with every upstroke, his own hand working his own cock, giving him just that little bit of extra friction that he needs to...

Steve’s breathing changes, the breathy little grunts turning longer, harder, and he’s pistoning now. _Close_ , Tony thinks, half-delirious, and clenches all those little interior muscle around the rock-hard length drilling into him, _so goddamn close..._

It doesn’t take long after that, maybe another half-doze strokes, before Steve’s forehead drops to Tony’s shoulder and his whole body freezes up, locking them both up as he comes in rush after rush of liquid white heat, straight up into him. That extra bit of stimulation across his prostate, along with a just-so downward twist on his cock, sends Tony over the edge with him, and he groans through his own climax, splattering across Steve’s belly.

He lays there under the other man’s solid, wonderful weight, and just rides it out.

But all too soon, Steve slips out and falls to the side, moaning a little, reaching out. Tony, however, is feeling that all-too-familiar pressure in his gut, and can’t offer anything more than a quick kiss. Rolling somewhat unsteadily to his feet, he stumbles to the bathroom and takes care of what he needs to.

Tony catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror after he’s done, splashing water in his face, wetting down a washcloth off the towel rack. He looks...

But he doesn’t really want to think about that right now, whatever he's feeling. It’s been a long time since he was in love with somebody. Pepper, maybe, before she made it damn clear that she knew him too well to ever want that with him. And before that...

 _Get a grip. You’re not in love with him,_ Tony tells himself.

But heading back into the main room, smelling that thick, heady scent of sex in the air, seeing Steve sprawled out that bed like that...

Yeah. Maybe there’s no denying it, he realizes as he pads back over and sits down on the edge of the mattress. Doesn’t mean he has to think about that right now. It’d just be... it’d be too much, maybe...

Lifting a tired arm, the soldier runs his fingers through his own hair, the strands half-dark with sweat now. “Wow,” he says softly, staring up at Tony as he swipes that wet washcloth across his groin, wiping him clean. “I... I’ve never done that before.”

“Could have fooled me. That was amazing,” Tony replies, not exactly being honest about the first part - he’s slept with enough men at this point in his life to know a virgin when he sees one - but Steve’s put himself out there pretty far tonight as he is, and something’s telling him that it wouldn’t do to point this out right now. “You were...”

Steve flushes and rolls over a bit, giving Tony room to stretch out beside him, reaching out for him at the same time. Tony grins, and tosses the cloth away, laying back down. His ass, complete with Steve’s hand now possessively on it, hanging off the edge, though, and the soldier laughs a little at feeling it. “I don’t think the bed’s big enough for us both, Anthony.”

“I think I’m in love with the way you say my name, Steve,” Tony grins back, and scoots closer, as close as he can, tangling into the other man’s arms, his still-clothed chest bumping Steve’s own sweat-slicked one. “It just sounds...”

“Good?” And Steve tugs a little at the bottom of his now-damp t-shirt. “So would you show me now?”

“I don’t think I’m really...”

“Anthony, I just had my... we just...”

“Fucked?”

The other man gives him a strange, almost sad look, and runs his hand up under the shirt, fingertips stroking his belly lightly. “I can’t imagine that there’s room for embarrassment after that.”

“Steve, I can’t...”

“I don’t care what you think it looks like. I want to see you.” 

And Tony, for some stupid reason, considers taking it off. Removing the cover. Showing him the arc reactor. Telling him everything. What year it is. Where he is. What’s going on. That dad’s gone...

But he doesn’t. He can’t. Not tonight. He’s out too far himself, and if they keep going, he’s got no idea how many miles out to sea they’ll both be swept. _Not the time to lose yourself_ , he thinks to himself. _Besides, he’ll think you’re manipulating him._

So Tony just pulls off the bed, collects shoes and socks and jeans and boxers. “Not tonight, Steve,” he says quietly, shaking out his pants. “Not yet.”

Steve rolls up on an elbow, those blue, blue eyes locked on him. He looks deliciously destroyed, and if it were anybody else, Tony would probably go over there, grind into him until they’re both hard, and fuck him until he passed out.

It’s not just anyone, though. It’s Steve Rogers. And something about that wouldn’t be right.

 _Not right now, at least_ , Tony promises himself. _Once he’s good with the basics..._

Blowjob next time. Tony definitely wants to at least give him a blowjob next time.

“We’re going to do this again?” Steve asks, a hint of worry in the words. “Right?”

“Of course,” Tony nods back, and jams his feet into his shoes.

It’s not until he gets home that night, gotten the suit put away, taken a long, hot shower, fended off JARVIS’ more annoying questions, deleted all his text messages from Agent Coulson, had at least four - possibly five - drinks, and is currently rereading one of his old Captain America comic books that he realizes he left the condom on the floor of Steve’s room.

With its bar code. And expiration date.

Which is just... well, shit.

+++++

Major Eliza Hutchinson likes to think of herself as far from a stupid women. Just the opposite in fact. She’s an Academy grad, she had an impeccable record in the A-10 - before she got her arm blown off, anyway - and Col Rhodes had thought highly enough of her to fight to bring her back on active duty to serve on his Advanced Weapons Division Taskforce Seraphim at the Pentagon, the one that worked with Stark Industries. She's been in the military since she was 18. She’s used to having a pretty good handle on the world around her.

Which is one of the reasons why this whole... _thing_... the last few weeks has been driving her crazy.

She sighs over her plate of eggs and fruit, staring at the window at her favorite corner of the cafeteria’s dining room, trying once again to make sense of all of this.

Neither Tony Stark, nor that Agent Coulson who seemed to be in charge of this project, had really told her what was going on. Told any of them. Just that bullshit _Captain Steve Rogers has been found alive and will be coming here to recuperate, don’t you fucking dare go against what we’re telling him_ briefing a few weeks ago. But the major - not stupid - had put most of it together herself.

It was S.H.I.E.L.D. that was behind all of this. Had to be. And it made her blood boil, thinking about it. Steve Rogers was an American hero, the first American super-hero, the best soldier of the last great war, and he deserved better than to become the tool of those shadowy motherfuckers. Or whatever they had planned for him. Couldn’t be good.

If the military had been the organization to dig Captain America out of the ice, it would have been handled much differently, she knew. They certainly wouldn’t have agreed to put him in a Stark-funded clinic - which begged the additional question of why Stark was going along with this in the first place - and they wouldn’t have treated him like some child who couldn’t handle the truth about when he’d woken up.

Although, she was grudgingly forced to admit to herself, the military dumping it all on Cap’s lap probably wouldn’t have been much better than this fantasy land of twisted modernity Stark had created. Might have been worse in a lot of ways. The old soldier still seemed rather reluctant to come out of himself. And to just throw him into some shiny new world, after he’d only just left his own, at war, on fire, no end to any of it in sight...

But maybe it really doesn’t matter one way or another at this point. 

Tony had given her back her cell phone about a week into this little farce. _If anything happens with him, call me first_. Her first uncharitable thought on the request was that Stark wanted to one-up that ginger bitch S.H.I.E.L.D. has embedded here, or was just being protective of something - someone - the Stark family had created. But then she’d thought about it a little more.

And realized that, in his own strange way, the man probably genuinely cared about Steve Rogers.

She didn’t think that was too off-base. Some people thought Stark was a complete asshole, but the major remembered him from his pre-Iron Man days, working with Rhodey, and she’d always felt like there was so much more to him than he let the world see...

“Ma’am?”

The word startled her clean out of her contemplation, and she found herself looking across the breakfast table at six-foot-five of World War Two soldier.

Who looks pretty goddamn upset.

Which can’t mean anything good.

“What’s up, Captain?” she drawls, like seeing him like this doesn’t affect her in the slightest, like her mind’s not screaming at her _he knows, fuck, he’s figured it out_. 

His voice is hard, flat, unemotional in the way men tend to get when they're trying to hide emotion. “Can we have a word, Major?”

“Absolutely,” the other officer replies slowly, and eases her phone out of her pocket. She knows the pattern of the key, even on the sleek little screen where it’s all simulated, and it’s easy enough now to work things with just one hand. She’s got this text message pre-loaded, too, just in case. 

_Get here now_.

“I would prefer if we went outside for this,” Cap states.

She hits the send button under the table, and tucks the phone back into the cargo pocket of her cut-off ABUs. “Of course, Steve. Come on. I know just the place,” the major tells him, wiping her mouth and tossing her napkin on her half-eaten breakfast. “Shall we?”

“Please.”

They’re both silent as they head out to the athletic fields behind the clinic, Major Hutchinson content to leave Cap to his own thoughts for the moment. He’s tense, stiff, shoulders pinched up, like he’s trying to keep something from escaping too soon. She can feel it coming off of him in waves, and tries to keep her own demeanor calm. No point in freaking him out any more than he already seems to be.

Rogers doesn’t relax until they break the edge of the wood, down one of those running paths that the captain always seems to be running in the mornings. He sags a bit as they enter the shade under the trees, but she still doesn’t say anything. There’s a clearing she’s trying to get to, the one she knows Stark uses whenever he flies out here. It’s just off one of main, unused outbuildings, so she just keeps going.

Hutchinson stops against the wall of the old converted barn, the thick wooden slats of the outer wall warm against her back, and just folds her good arm against the stump of the other one. She’s going to be so glad when Tony finishes up the adjustments to the finger actuators in her new hand.

“I’m going to ask you a question, ma’am,” he says quietly, in that same cold way that doesn’t seem like him at all, “and I’m appreciate it if you’d answer me honestly.”

Hutchinson nods. “If I can, I will.”

“I need you to tell me what year you were born.”

And _that_ , she wasn’t expecting. Talk around it, stall until Stark got here, maybe answer a question or two... but this is worse, somehow, than him just asking what year it is. Shit. Shit, she’s thirty-six this year, and thirty-six in 1950 would have been...

“Why do you want to know?” she tosses back.

He looks uncertain then, and jams his hands in the pockets of his gray exercise sweats, clearly fingering something that he’s got in there. “Anthony... Anthony said nobody would care if I... if I tell you something.”

“Of course, Captain. Anything,” she replies automatically. “Anything between you and me, it’ll always be confidential.”

Rogers doesn’t look entirely convinced, but he nods back, and pulls his hand out of his pocket, holding out some little thing in front of her. “What year is it?” he asks, and his voice is like ice.

She meets his eyes - the blue swirling, angry - and takes the square of printed wrapper away from him. That texture, the color, the words on the front... where in the hell did he get a condom?

And... oh. Oh, shit. No way. No way Tony Stark and... Iron Man and Captain America didn’t...

“We had ‘em in 1943,” Rogers says, somewhat disapprovingly, probably mistaking her silence for something else entirely. “I know what that is, ma’am. I’m not a prude.”

“Of course not, Steve,” she says, still a little stunned at the enormity of that revelation. That, she was not expecting. But that’s not what Steve’s looking for, and she tries to get her brain working again. She flips the wrapped condom over. “So what’s the point of...”

And then she sees the expiration date on it. Three months from now. 

**07/2012**

“What year were you born, Major?” he repeats, a bit of a growl in his words now.

She just hands him the condom back. “Steve, I don’t know if we should...”

He advances, steps close, and she finds herself backing up a little now. Not that she thinks Steve would hurt her, but... “What year is it?” he demands, not raising his voice, something in the way he says it turning her blood cold anyway. “What is going on here? What the hell is this place?”

“Captain Rogers...” she begins, and then falls silent at the sound of repulsors.

At the sight of the Iron Man suit, descending into the meadow, behind the old soldier’s back.

And Steve notices that she’s looking at something, hears it himself, cocks his head at her, and looks behind him. 

She’s not sure what she’s expecting. She’s seen plenty of boys lose their shit in a variety of ways, seen grown men cry over missed births and Dear John letters - grief, she knows, comes in a wide spectrum of expression. So while she’s not expecting anything in particular, she does sort of think Cap’s going to fall in there somewhere. _How horrible for him_ , the major thinks.

He’s quiet, though, still as granite, stoic, like all the biographies and history books she’s read about him over the years agree that he was. He doesn’t do anything much at all except freeze up like that. Except that his hands do clench up into fists at his side, his shoulders pinch up again, and he’s confused, everything in him is screaming it out.

Major Hutchinson just slots up beside him, staring ahead at where Tony’s striding towards them, red fingers digging at the latch of his helmet.

“It’s two thousand twelve, Captain Rogers. You were asleep for almost seventy years,” she says quietly. His eyes flick over hers, some kind of bottomless grief opening up in him.

“So what is this place? Who is that?” he asks quietly, clearly struggling against the emotion bleeding from him now. “If it’s not Howard’s cousin...”

“I think you boys should discuss that on your own,” she tells him, feeling intensely awkward herself now, and reaches over to squeeze his hand. “Don’t be too hard on him, Steve. Everyone here just wanted to make this easier for you, starting with Mr. Stark.”

“So he is a Stark?”

“That much is true,” she agrees, and looks at him, very seriously. “You gonna be okay if I go, Steve?”

He nods once, eyes sliding shut.

And there’s nothing more for her to do here, she knows, except intrude on something between two men who very well might have been intimate, might have...

So she leaves them to it. Hoping like hell she hasn’t just ruined everything here somehow.

But Steve Rogers does deserve the truth, after all.

+++++

Steve watches the man - Anthony, whoever the hell he really is - approaching him, the tall, seed-heavy grasses of the small meadow brushing that gold and red armor, flying suit, whatever... whatever the hell that is, something dying inside of him with every step.

He’d been so damn happy when he’d woken up this morning. Felt better than he’d felt in a long, long time. Better than he’d ever felt. Content. At peace. Whole in a way he didn’t know a man could feel whole.

And he’d found that condom on the floor. 

He’d been such an idiot. Such a fool. To be taken in by all the strangeness here, to not fight it harder, not demand answers, better answers, more answers for it all. To believe that there was something between him and this man, something pure, that something he’s been looking for his entire life, and thought he might have finally found last night. Believed that they’d shared something.

Which had all been a lie. All of it. 

But that’s a dull pain, sharp and piercing, like the feel of a first punch, fading to nothing now, overcome by the second blow, the bigger, harder blow. The realization that everyone is dead. Seventy years in the future. His team and Peggy and Howard and everyone, everyone he ever knew, ever might have known. It’s all gone. His whole world, swept away. He hadn’t even asked. He’d been so afraid to ask. And now this...

He falls back against the outbuilding wall, hand over his face, the roar of his own failure, his own stupidity, drowning out everything else. Fuck, he’s been such an idiot. Fuck.

That sleek, strange armor comes to a halt in front of him, but Steve can’t look up, can’t bring himself to look at this man, whether from anger or guilt or shame or the vast, overwhelming sense of loss, his whole life, lost...

“Steve,” Anthony says quietly. “Steve, what’s going on?”

Steve doesn’t really want to talk to him. Doesn’t want to hear anything he’s got to say. And there’s a hole growing inside him, a deep and unnavigable hole...

“Who you are?” he asks then, the question coming unbidden, coming out of its own accord. “Who are you are, really? Because you’re not Howard’s cousin. I know that.”

Anthony’s jaw clenches up, above the collar of that bizarre armor he’s wearing, and his eyes roll away, up into the sky. “Steve...”

“Who are you? Who the hell are you, Anthony?” he demands, needing that answer, needing it desperately now. “Why did you...”

"I'm..." and Anthony pauses, hesitated, dark eyes falling down to earth. To Steve. And there's something that's almost - not quite - fear in them as the next few words come out deceptively strong, tellingly clipped. "I'm Howard's son, Steve, born 1967," And he smiles, rueful, unamused. "He and mom died when I was nineteen. Car accident. He’s been gone for over twenty years. Everything else I said about myself was, is, true."

And Steve feels something deep down, some last bolster of hope that perhaps the major had been having it on with him, collapse in on itself, the struts blown away by those few words.

"...it's 2012," Anthony's still saying, speaking, erasing all those doubts about this place and it's strangeness, replacing it all with fear about what might be outside of it. "I know that seems like a long time, and I honestly don't understand why you..."

"Didn't die?" Steve interjects, harsher than he means to, and regrets it instantly as he sees Anthony flinch. Still, like setting a bone back into place, this is going to hurt, hurts already, but has to be done. "When were you going to tell me? Tomorrow, next week, never..."

"Look, Cap, it's not like that," Howard's son, someone who shouldn't even exist yet, says quickly. "What they were going to do..."

"So this was a better option?" he snaps, not wanting to hear excuses right now, not wanting them to rip that already-widening void in him any bigger. "Lying to me? Telling me it had only been a few years? Not letting me know... know that everyone, everything's gone?"

"Steve," Anthony says, stepping in closer now, tone firm, _like he’s lecturing a child_ Steve can’t help but think, "nothing's gone. Remember? You saved this country, it's still here, it's still America..."

"Yeah?" And he can't keep the bite of his own rising, deepening anger out of his voice. "That why you chose to hide it from me? Because nothing's changed?"

"Steve..."

"I'm no fool, Stark," he snaps. "Don't treat me like one."

"Sure, it's changed," Anthony replies, his own voice heating now. "Stuff's changed, technology's changed, that shit's changed. But we haven't, Rogers. People haven't changed."

Steve laughs a little - this isn't funny, this is the least funny thing that has ever happened in his life - but finds himself thinking about the people here, about the soldiers and Major Hutchinson and Anthony himself, about last night, about how that felt...

"Same old human world, dressed up in an unfamiliar skin," Anthony says quietly, like he's reading Steve's mind. "I guess I wanted you to know that, before I threw you back out there."

Steve looks at him. His eyes are closed, the helmet-sweaty slick of his head back against the wall of the outbuilding, and the soldier finds himself wondering what this took out of the man, of everyone here, just to keep him in the dark, spare him this horror before he was barely awake again.

"So, it was all a charade," he states flatly. "Just to... just to get me back into the world."

Anthony turns then, the sound of minute hydraulics working to push him around on one arm, facing Steve. His face is unreadable again. "Not everything, Steve."

"I don't know if I believe that..."

"About the soldier who became the American hero of the damn war? The guy my dad never shut up about? The man who was obviously in love with my..." and Anthony falters. "Last thing I would have planned out for this."

His pulse is starting to hammer in his ears, Steve suddenly feels like that ninety-pound asthmatic again, that scrawny boy who couldn't run a block without loosing his breath. Vulnerable. Unprotected. Exposed.

"So what's that mean?" he counters.

Anthony's mask of a face holds steady over whatever's seething underneath. Neither man speaks for a long moment, and Steve's on the verge of pushing him away, of heading back inside, forgetting this whole thing between them ever happened...

When the sky-cold touch of a red gauntlet at his wrist stops him dead.

He looks down, and looks up, right in Anthony’s eyes, and before he can say anything, there’s another chill touch at the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry,” Anthony says, sounding for all the world like he’s never said those words to anyone before. “God, Steve, I’m so fucking sorry.”

He closes his eyes against it. It’s too big to look at, to think about for a second longer. Everything, swept away, out to sea, into a time he probably wouldn’t have lived to see, not if... “Anthony, I don’t need you to...”

“Let me take you home, Cap,” he interrupts, quiet, is encased fingers stroking at the short-shorn hair right above Steve’s collar. “That’s all I wanted to do here. Like all the boys here. Make it easier for you to come back to the world.”

And Steve, after a long, long moment, too numb to think this through, to see what the strategic environment is, suddenly weary from seventy years asleep, seventy years of loss, in the face of the only thing he has here in this strange new time, the only thing that might just make it all worth it, finds himself nodding.

+++++

It hasn’t been exactly easy on Steve, coming into New York today, Tony knows. Steve hasn’t said much about it, but it’s pretty easy to tell that he’s upset.

“JARVIS?” he asks, blasting off from the street in front of Grimaldi’s to a smattering of applause from the people that are still waiting for seats, catching altitude fast as he dares with the very non-aerodynamic delivery bag in his hands. “Is Cap still out on the landing pad?”

“Yes, sir. He hasn’t moved all day. Shall I have him go inside so you can land?”

“Naw. Just let him know I’m two minutes out.”

“Of course, sir.”

It was a bit of a silly errand, Tony knew, somewhat of a stupid thing to do, flying all the way out to Brooklyn for pizza. But Steve has had a pretty rough day, he figures, what, with finding out that it was 2012 and all. He deserves something a little more familiar than any of weird, Whole Foods shit that’s currently cluttering up the pantry.

And Tony, if he’s being honest with himself, could use some ridiculously delicious, off-diet carbs himself.

When he’d gotten the text from Hutchinson, as he was throwing the suit on, fast as the robotics could manage, Tony had known. Steve had figured it out. However he’d done it, the man had figured it out. And it had almost seemed a relief, an _end_ , a plan well-executed and effective.

Except when he’d landed, and seen the look in Steve’s eyes. Betrayal, betrayal like Tony had never seen in anyone before. Not aimed at him anyway, and he’s found himself wondering if that’s what he had looked like when Obie had casually admitted to black-market arms trading.

Regardless, the only thought in his mind was _fix this_.

He’d never been more grateful for anything in his life than he was for Steve not shoving him away.

After they’d gotten back up to the clinic, Tony had spoken with Black Widow - _go tell Fury the game’s over, Romanov, and don’t you dare think Steve’s going anywhere with any of you fuckers tonight. Or ever. He’s not yours._

_So whose is he then? Yours?_

Tony had just grinned at her, and winked, and gone off to see where Steve had gotten himself off to.

Turned out, the man had called a quick, impromptu meeting of patients and staff at the same time as Tony was dealing with Widow. Steve had wanted to say _I know these last few weeks couldn’t have been easy on all of you, it must have been a sacrifice..._ when he’d been completely overwhelmed by deluge of applause, and a mess of questions that everyone had obviously been bottling up for the past two and a half weeks, Major Hutchinson looking smug against a back wall, and Tony had made a mental note to get her new hand working ASAP.

Steve had looked a little stunned by the time Tony managed to get all that quieted back down and Hogan to the clinic to pick them up - this time in the R8, because seventy years behind the times or not, Tony had never met a man who couldn’t appreciate a super-car. Steve had run a hand over the leather seats, asked a few questions, mostly about what he could expect, who’d approached Tony about the whole deception plot, what was with the suit.

_It’s a weapon. Last one the Stark family will ever build. Iron Man’s mine alone._

_That your way of making sure you’re not putting those boys back in harm’s way?_

_It’s a terrible privilege,_ he finished lamely, thinking about what a cocky bastard he’d been only a few years ago, before the suit, before Yinsen and Obie and everything else, how long it had taken him to learn the simple truths that seem imprinted in this man’s DNA. _In a way, Iron Man’s sort of become the best part of me._

Steve had nodded, and then fallen completely silent after that, as they were crossing the bridge into Manhattan. Tony just rearranged them both in the back seat of the car, laying back against the door panel, both legs up on the seat, Steve cradled between them, and held the man until they’d pulled into the garage under Stark Tower. 

Steve had spent most of that first day out on the landing pad, watching the city’s bustle down below. Unsure of what to do with it, Tony had left him to his thoughts. But the silence eventually proved too much - he’d always hated silences with other people, didn’t provide enough data points for him to figure out what was going on - and by the time it got dark, Tony had to do something about that. 

So he’d ordered dinner, pizza from an old place in Brooklyn that he was hoping would be familiar to Steve - New Yorkers had been incessantly demanding about their goddamn pizza standards for the last century of so, after all - and thrown on the same lightweight flight-only armor he’d used to go pick Steve up. 

_And there he is_ , he thinks, just a little giddy thrill running up his spine at seeing his... well, whatever they are to each other now, perched out on the edge of the landing pad, bare feet folded up under him, one of those thick, soft plaid shirts rolled up to his elbows, unbuttoned halfway down his ridiculously sculpted chest. He’s got a bucket of beer beside him, and he doesn’t even bother turning around as Tony lands and the robotics start taking the armor off, popping a couple beers open with his hands and tossing the caps out into space. 

Watching him sit there like that, that ridiculously strong body framed against the waking lights of the Manhattan skyline, Tony suddenly realizes how alone he must feel. How adrift. Completely lost. Homeless...

 _You’re going to fix that for him,_ he promises himself, and shakes off the last of the boot-sections. It disappears back into the landing, and he grabs up the pizza bag from here he’d deposited it. 

“Your, uhh, robot-voice... thing let me know where you keep the beer. Hope that’s okay.”

“Mi casa es su casa, Cap,” Tony replies, and then realizes. Oh. “You know what robots are?”

“Yeah, like in _Astounding Science-Fiction_ or something like that. I always wondered about that when I was a kid, if stuff like that was real. And then HYDRA, and your suit...”

Tony laughs, walking up and sitting down next to Steve, pulling one leg up underneath him, letting the other dangle off into the air. “I never would have pegged you for a geek, Rogers.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Tony chuckles, and gestures at the opened beers. “One of those for me?” 

Steve looks over at him, blue eyes dark in the darkening evening. “That real New York pizza, or some kind of weird... future thing?”

“What, like that goat-cheese and arugular with bechemel bullshit?” Tony quips back, and trades a box for the opened beer, hoping he bought enough. He got five, just in case Steve’s metabolism really is as insanely high as dad used to claim it was - the staff at the clinic had only giggled when he’d asked. “Fucking-a this is the real stuff.”

The blond dips his head to sniff the top of the proffered box, and then grins. “People really put goat cheese on pizza?”

“People put a lot of weird shit on pizza these days,” Tony says lightly, and then sobers a little. Reaches over, touches Steve’s knee, holds up his beer. “What should we drink to, captain?”

Steve sighs, and fingers the neck of his own beer, staring back out across lower Manhattan. “I don’t know, Anthony... or is it Tony?”

Tony just shrugs. “I do like the way you say my full name,” he admits slowly. 

“Anthony it is, then,” Steve says, and lifts his face up, up to the smear of light against the clouds above. “How about we drink to coming home?”

“Coming home it is,” Tony agrees, loving the way that sounds, and gestures for Steve to lift his bottle, grins as he clinks them together, as Steve downs half the lager in one go. Tony tells himself _don’t even think about trying to outdrink him, remember dad’s story about Naples?_ , and takes a small sip of his own instead. “So,” he asks, casual again as Steve sets the beer aside and goes for a slice of pizza, “this does mean you’re moving in, right?”

Steve almost drops the slice. He looks... shocked. It’s sort of cute on him, Tony decides. “W-what? People do that these days?”

Tony grins back at him, and is about to make some kind of clever comment about something - not yet, it’s still forming - when JARVIS interrupts.

“Sir, Agent Coulson is on the line for you.”

Steve looks at him. Tony sighs. Probably some shit about S.H.I.E.L.D. being pissed about him stealing Captain America, ruining all their plans... “Tell him I’m not in, JARVIS. In fact, I’m out.”

“Sir, my security protocols are being overriden,” JARVIS stutters, and then cuts out to the sound of the elevator doors opening up inside.

Tony rolls his eyes, and reaches for his own slice of pizza. Fucking S.H.I.E.L.D.

“Mr. Stark, Captain,” Coulson says, standing on the step behind him, holding a black folding tablet of some kind. “Looks like you two are enjoying the evening away from the clinic.”

Steve looks him up and down. “I remember you. You the folks who wanted Tony keeping me there?”

“Agent Phil Coulson, S.H.I.E.L.D., and yes, we are the people who wanted to ease you back into things, as it were.”

“I know what you’re here for,” Tony says around a mouthful of deliciousness, “and the answer is no.”

“Mr. Stark,” and he sort of loves how impossible it is to get Coulson irritated, “we have a situation that we could really use your help on. Both of you.” And that tablet’s being waved in his face.

“I, uhh, hate being handed things,” he says, unable to actually scoot away, pushing it aside as best he can.

“You here with a mission, sir?” Steve asks, hard as iron.

Coulson nods. “Oh yeah.”

Steve takes the tablet away from him, and reaches over, plucks Tony’s pizza box away and replaces it with whatever shit S.H.I.E.L.D.’S got planned now. “I thought there was that whole personality profile thing?” he tries, really not wanting to get either of them caught up in this right now. “What was I? Volatile, unpredictable, self-obsessed...”

“Not from where I’m sitting,” Steve says quietly, and Tony looks up at him, startled to the core. Nobody’s ever...

“We’re beyond personality profiles now, Tony,” Coulson says, and there’s something in him, some little twitch, that makes Tony think twice about kicking him out.

But he can’t exactly back down now, so he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask. Just stands up and heads inside to his main holographic workspace. Whatever this is, it’ll be so much easier to see there...

When he opens it and expands it, there it is. A mess of personal files. Video of the Hulk, Black Widow, another S.H.I.EL.D. agent firing off arrows, some guy who looks like he belongs at Ye Olde Ren Faire. _Avengers Initiative_ , Tony finds himself thinking.

And right in the center, right there, amidst a forest of papers on nuclear thermodynamics. A small blue cube, glowing, some kind of...

“HYDRA’s power source,” Steve says behind him, anger in his voice now, and lays a hand on his shoulder, presses up against him a little. “We’re taking this.”

“Like hell we are. You just got out of...”

“Not with this thing still around,” he says firmly. “Nobody else is going to die because of this thing on my watch.”

The soldier’s almost completely wrapped around him now, a hand on his hip, holding them close, and Tony thinks about all the times in his life when nobody was there, when the best thing he had to look forward to was getting plastered at another science conferences, fucking undergrads in hotel bathrooms, nobody, nothing close. Nothing wanted. Nobody wanting him.

But Steve’s solid. Steve’s real and whole and here, here because he wants to be, here regardless of Tony’s reputation or fame or money or whatever the fuck. Steve wants him, and Steve’s so sure of himself, so convinced, so pure, all in a way that Tony’s never been.

What would it hurt to trust that? Trust someone else, just this once?

“Okay,” he says, feeling the world shift around him, something changing, never to be the same again. “Okay, let’s do it."

Steve hugs him tight, not saying a word, and for the first time since he can remember, Tony feels free.


End file.
